I was dead set against squeegeeing my film until a guy at the lab in Portland showed me his own negatives

Julia Wells · 2026-09-19T14:05:04.45041+00:00

For about two years I refused to touch a squeegee to my negatives. I read all the forum posts about scratches and figured the risk was not worth it, so I just hung the film and let it drip dry. Then about 6 months ago I was picking up a roll at a lab in Portland and got talking to the guy behind the counter, an older fellow named Dennis who has been developing since the 70s. I mentioned I was getting water spots on my Tri-X and he pulled out a binder of his own negatives from the 90s, all squeegeed, all spotless. He said the trick is to soak the squeegee in Photo-Flo for a minute first and use one smooth pass, never go back up. I tried it on my next 3 rolls and got zero scratches and no spots. Turns out my problem was never the squeegee, it was that I was letting hard water dry on the film. Anyone else here swear by squeegeeing, or do you still hang and pray?

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I was dead set against squeegeeing my film until a guy at the lab in Portland showed me his own negatives | Analog Photo Fixing - HW Forums