Removing pinholes in HIE Negatives: Kodak's offcial solution

["Rolland Elliott" <rolland_elliott@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here's Kodak's official answer on how to remove pinholes
>From "Photographic Retouching" Publication E-97 page 27

Pinholes those tiny round minus density areas are very difficult defects to 
correct in a negative.
They are usually caused by dust in the camera or by faulty processing 
procedures; so if you encounter many of them in your work complain to the 
photographer.
To correct these tiny clear spots, many retouches attempt to add soft 
graphite or black dye to the area.  What happens is that when you have 
finished, you still have the clear spot in the center and have built up a 
nice black ring around it.  You have created more work for the print 
retoucher in this case.

This is where I like to suggest the use of a stylus, or abrading tool, as it 
is sometime referred to.  The stylus is used ONLY on the base side of the 
film. So turn the negative over; and if you are using a retouching machine, 
turn the vibration setting up quite high – maybe 60 or 70 or 80 on the 
scale.  If you are working manually, you have to make the individual strokes 
very tiny.  The stylus actually abrades the surface of the negative base so 
that the light is dispersed and a black spot in the print is avoided. The 
worst thing that can happen in using a stylus is that you can overcorrect 
the pinhole and produce a white spot on the print, which is better than 
having a black one. So the idea in using a stylus is to roughen the surface 
of the base of the negative to disperse the light rays.  It actually appears 
that you have added graphite.

My personal note:
A handheld Dremel rotary tool works quite well for this purpose. A cheaper 
solution is to just by a pointy Dremel abrasive tip and do the corrections 
by hand, this is much more labor intensive. Any of the abrasive tips will 
work just make sure it keeps a good point.  These are sold at any large 
hardware store

Peace Rolland Elliott
PS. A computer scan would of course be the best way, but I'm sure many of 
you don't have a fancy negative scanner.


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