More scanning tonight, and yet more dust woes. Suffice to say I won’t be using the same place again for my colour developing. I’m frankly quite disheartened at the thought that some probably quite nice pictures are looking not so nice due to this, or will require an undue amount of dust spotting in Photoshop – a mind-numbing task. I tried cleaning the first couple of negatives with some IPA which did remove quite a lot of the dust, but also seems to have added some faint streaks which may, or may not, be permanent. Not good.
I’m going to have to bit the bullet and start developing my own colour film, aren’t I? In the meantime, I’m going to have to find somewhere else and incur postage costs.
The shot below was from the same lab, and while still dusty in comparison with the lab I used to use (which has now closed), it’s nothing like as bad as the roll I’ve started to scan tonight. It still took quite some time to dust spot though.
Nikon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D & Kodak Portra 160. Lab developed, home scanned, & converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 17 September 2022
Steel City Snapper photography 
Frustrating…
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Definately 😦
I’ll have another look at them today to see if I can make a better job of cleaning them.
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I had horrid results with a mail-order film developing company. What I have found that really helps is using Silverfast’s dust and dirt removal. In their free program, it has proven to be really good. I don’t know what you use as a scanner, but you might see if your scanner does have access to a free copy. People say Silverfast is complicated, but it isn’t – the only thing is it doesn’t save your set up in the free version for certain things. I did my scanning as a color negative – so no raw film here as with using Negative Lab Pro – but it did a really good job on cleaning up old color slides from the 1950s. Good luck to you – and from what I hear, color film developing is not that hard, just picky.
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Thanks -N-.
I have a copy of Silverfast, but it will only work with my Plustek scanner, which doesn’t have infra-red dust cleaning as a feature unfortunately.
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If you have other scanners with the infrared dust cleaning, you might be able to get another copy of Silverfast. I have an Epson V600 – about $200 when I bought it – and while not a great scanner, the Silverfast is available for it. Same with other modern scanners.
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I have a V550, which has Digital ICE, and which I use for medium format scanning. The Plustek produces better results for 135 though, and I don’t want to lose that quality.
I’ve had another go at some of the dusty negs today and managed to get them a little cleaner, but it’s a less than satisfactory experience. Hopefully I’ll get results I’m happy with, albeit requiring more effort than I’d have hoped was necessary.
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It looks great to me.
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