Response to fingerprints on undeveloped negatives?

Scott..I've developed thousands (really) of rolls of 35mm film and more recently hundreds of rolls of 120/220, all on Paterson reels, with never a finger print UNTIL I get nosey and start peeking at wet negs. JUST A HUGE HINT: if your using Paterson reels with 35mm film...leave the film leader out of the cartridge or pull it out 3 inches using a Kodak Leader retriever. With the lights ON you can thread the extended leader into the slots of the Paterson reel, over the tiny ball bearings that grip the sprocket holes. Once both edges of the film are gripped by the bearings turn off the lights. Then pull 18 inches or so of film out of the cartridge and ratchet it onto the reel. Repeat until all the film is on the reel. Cut the film allowing the cartridge to drop away. The only things that can go wrong with this technique are 1) Allowing the film to jump out of the reels starter slots because you didn't hold your thumbs over them as you ratchet. 2) Jerking the film out of a dirty cartridges felt light trap (because this method is so easy that you wanted to see if you could ratchet the film on in 5 seconds, I takes me 30 seconds or so). Anyone who has used the Paterson reels quickly learns to hold their thumbs over those starter slot tabs. And all you have to do in the second scene is keep the cassettes clean and in there cans. If they get dirty once the light is out pry off the end of the cartridge and slip the film that is already attached to the reel out of the cartridge. All this is all very easy to do. I could have probably threaded 20 rolls onto reels, with a 100 percent success rate, in the time it took me to write this...jim

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