Sean Esopenko

Center Street Bridge Lion & Wet Mounting

November 9, 2010

This is one of the recently replaced lions on the Center Street Bridge, Downtown Calgary, Canada.  There was a lot of controversy surrounding these lions.  I was crossing the bridge by foot returning from some shooting when I saw the setting sun filtering through the buildings in the distance.  In a flurry I set up the camera and took a shot as fast as I could.  I finally decided to give it a scan because I’ve had a very hard time printing this image out in the dark room.  I think I might need some sort of a diffusion head because I’m losing all my hilight detail when enlarging in the dark room with my condenser enlarger.  I decided to leave the outer area of the negative intact for this scan because I think it’s good to reveal process in some cases.

Jim Kitchen has been giving me advice on scanning my large format negatives.  Basically he uses a wet mounting technique using simple mineral oil and picture framing glass.  No fancy anti-newton-ring glass, no fancy wet mounting fluids and I’ve been getting good results.  He recommends first cleaning the negative and glass with 99% rubbing alcohol.  The 70% stuff you find at most drug stores won’t work; I found the concentrated stuff at Costco.  They come in a pack of four for $8.

After cleaning the glass with rubbing alcohol you lay down a small amount of mineral oil on the framing glass.  I found about 1/2 a teaspoon is enough for a 4×5 negative.  Lay the negative, emulsion side against the glass, on top of the oil and use a brayer to slowly roll out the oil beneath the negative.  You can use rolling patterns to keep the oil layer even and work air bubbles to the outer edge.

I found 4×5 negatives slip and slide around a lot while doing this.  In order to deal with slippage I use kleenex and rubbing alcohol and gently clean one edge of the negative and glass.  Once an edge is clean I lay down “velvet” scotch tape along the clear edge of the negative being careful not to lay the tape on the image area.  Once I have an edge taped down I repeat it for all the other edges.  As the edges get taped down it starts to stay in place.

Nearing the end of the process, I perform a final clean up of any residual oil on the surface of the negative and the glass.  Then I use green painter’s masking tape to suspend the glass above the scanning plate.  On each corner of the glass sheet, on the same side I taped down the negative, I put 3 layers of masking tape.  This helps to suspend the negative just along the glass surface  and prevents the oil from oozing out due to pressure.

I lay the glass down over the image area of my Epson v700 using the film area guide.  Make sure nothing obstructs the top of the guide that has the “do not block” symbol.  This entire process takes me 45 minutes to an hour.  There’s no sense rushing this tage, Jim stressed, and through trial and error I learned he was telling the truth.  Rushing this stage can make for an unsatisfactory scan or leave oil all over your scanner’s glass.  Both are not fun.

Finally I scan in the negative taking care to not allow the output levels to exceed 250.  This helps when making an inkjet print by forcing the printer to lay a super fine layer of ink over the paper, preventing bare paper from being revealed.  This helps with gloss differential and provides for a smoother print to look at.  If your image is destined for the web you can bump it up to 255 but remember to re-adjust it when you’re getting ready for print.

Wet mounting can be extremely cheap and with a bit of practice it’s not really an inconvenience.  The increased detail obtained in the shadow details is definitely worth it for me since I find most of my images are of a very low key.  In all I spent no less than $35 for all that was needed and it was available locally.  I highly recommend giving it a try and you can contact me if you need some help or advice.

Thanks again to Jim Kitchen for sharing his wet mounting technique!

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