Recently I purchased an old vibrating style negative retouching machine. So far i am not impressed. What i have always done in the past was to use a dry spotting pallet, tapeing the neg to a light box, looking through a large magnifier, then painfully going to work. The retouching machine seems to work on the same principle. To my suprise, I get worse results using the retouching machine! Does anyone know of "the masters" techniques, or any special tools/solutions to use? I am mostly retouching people (skin), although fixing mishandled negs might come in handy one day. Any advise on retouching, or sources of advise, would be much appreciated. Thanks, George

-- George (zbeeblebrox42@yahoo.com), December 17, 2001

Answers

The machine is to be used with pencils. Charrette's has the soft leads you will use for this. I used to do a lot of this and it works great. You need to use a very sharp soft lead and much like spotting, work in layers. You will be adding density to the thin parts of the negatives, like lines and facial imperfections. The older emulsions, TXP, PXP Ektapan already have a tooth on the emulsion side. If you are using newer films you will need to use negative retouching fluid which when painted on the emulsion side will add tooth to hold your lead. Cheers, Scott

-- Scott Walton (walton@ll.mit.edu), February 21, 2002.