In 1976 or thereabouts the park service opened up Ellis Island to tours before the restoration work had begun. I took my trusty Nikon FtN and a couple of rolls of Tri-X and shot some stuff. I thought I'd lost the negs but they turned up by surprise last week.
I shot two rolls and only have the negs from one. The other roll was all interiors, but I have some prints from that roll that I could scan. It was spooky; kind of like an abandoned hospital.
A puzzler though: these negs were out of my possession for 40 years and look a lot more grainy than they should. Can poor storage affect grain even after development??? (I have film that's older than this but looks perfect.)
A puzzler though: these negs were out of my possession for 40 years and look a lot more grainy than they should. Can poor storage affect grain even after development??? (I have film that's older than this but looks perfect.)
No, they look like good exposures. I had a look at the prints made from another roll shot at the same time (same subject) and the prints look really clean. Thought it might be a scanning artifact but when I look at the negs with a loupe I see the grain. Not a big problem--I think the grain adds something--but just curious if bad storage could cause this even after a develop and fix. I do suspect that the negs were stored in abysmal conditions--several are water damaged and have other kinds of schmutz on them, and they spent several years in a closet in New Mexico. I'm just wondering how vulnerable negatives could be post-development.
Oh, and they were shipped here from Scotland at one point, so they may have been x-rayed too. Whatever, I'm just thankful that I got them back.
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