I don't think the half moons are scratches but rather they are caused by the film being kinked as it was being put into the holder. The half moon shape is the give-away. Jerry -----Original Message----- From: pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pure-silver-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Justin F. Knotzke Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:47 AM To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [pure-silver] Mistakes Galore Bonjour La! I souped my 4x5's last night. I gotta tell you, this whole LF thing has been like learning to take pictures all over again. Granted, I've only been lugging a 35mm around for 2 years now but LF is another beast entirely. But I am loving it. So back to the program. I go through XTOL like Tim Hortons goes through coffee cups (a little Canadiana for you). I use 2 inch deep 8x10 trays to soup my 4x5. I do 3 negs at a time. Anymore at this stage and I get into trouble. Steve Simmons in his book says I should use 2L of soup. TWO LITERS! That's a lotta soup. So I have been using 1.5L. For 4x5, say you are souping 10 negs in all, how much developer do you use? Next, XTOL. Are there any tips on dissolving part B? I get these giant chunks of white rocks that I have to mash with a jackhammer. Rather annoying stuff. My focusing and exposure and developing issues (minus one) are settled. Or so it seems. So that's cool. There's been lots of mistakes along the way. My current problem are scratches. I tray develop. I get little half moon scratches. It looks like I buried my pinkie nail into the neg. Any idea what causes those? The only thing that comes to mind is when I load film I slightly bend the film when it is half way into the holder to see if I got it in the right groove. I've had problems with not sliding the film in correctly and when I would return the dark slide, after having made a picture, the slide would smack the film out the other side and I would curse rather loudly and pretend to throw ShenHao into the drink. But a few of these images have rather deep half moon scratches. The cloud images came out (minus the scratch). If I can, I'll scan it and post it. Thanks again J --=3D20 Justin F. Knotzke jknotzke@xxxxxxxxx http://www.shampoo.ca =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there. ============================================================================================================= To unsubscribe from this list, go to www.freelists.org and logon to your account (the same e-mail address and password you set-up when you subscribed,) and unsubscribe from there.