Digital BW, The Print

I have a suggestion. Get a regular silver print made from the neg and scan that print. Advantage of new print is to have a very clean surface and use a paper with little or no texture.

Mark
http://www.stillrivereditions.com

On Jul 24, 2012, at 10:46 AM, Clayton Price wrote:

> Well, with all the various scanning suggestions for very dense negatives, my experience has been
> that none of them really work well, including drum scans. I've a collection of a couple dozen 
> negatives waiting for me to get around to using a chemical reducer, which IMO is the best, and 
> probably fastest  way to save those negs. 
> 
> There's lots of info on the internet for reducers, but most of the googled inquiries turn out to be 
> lectures of how to expose your negatives, rather than fixing the already dense ones.
> 
> However, if you decide to do it yourself, the most common process is a combination of
> Farmer's Reducer (which is basically Potassium Ferricyanide), and Sodium Thiosulfate (which is
> hypo/fixer).  You would want to use only that, and not a rapid fixer or one with hardener in it.
> 
> The same chemistry will work as a subtractive reducer (removing equal amounts of silver from
> both the highlight and shadow areas) OR as a proportional reducer ( removing more from the
> overexposed or overdeveloped highlights than from the shadow area.
> 
> The subtractive method is a singe solution of Farmer's Reducer with Sodium Thiosulfate, and the
> proportional  method is two trays - one with each chemical, and the process can go back and 
> forth until the densities are correct. Diluting both solutions with water, will slow the process, which
> is helpful, especially when one is first trying the process. Finally, one would wash the reduced 
> negatives for about 15 minutes, then add a couple drops of Photoflo to get a streak free dry surface.
> 
> You do not need a darkroom - my plan is to use the kitchen sink! You do need rubber gloves
> and a couple or three darkroom trays - plastic or stainless steel.
> 
> Finally - there's tons written about this process. I stumbled on one book called the Elements of
> B&W Printing by Carson Graves. He has a chapter called "Salvage Techniques - negative 
> reducers". I'm not connected in any way with the author or publishers, but it looks like a 
> helpful publication - accessible both from the internet and bookstores.
> 
> These days, the best source I know of for purchasing the chemistry is Photographers' Formulary.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> Clayton Price
> www.claytonpricephotographer.com