Archived negatives have excessive shift. Ideas? Help?

[GBS]

Hi!

First-time poster, longtime photographer, new-ish to the forum. Thank you for having me!

I'm in the early stages of digitizing my 14,000+ photos from the last 30 years. I have been saddened/shocked to find more than an acceptable amount of negatives showing major and uneven shifts towards blue (resulting in a heavy yellow cast when scanned). I cannot attest to the full extent of the damage, as I've only cherry-picked a few rolls to scan so far, but this has shown up enough for me to consider it an issue. The initial rolls in question are 25, 23, and 20 years old.

Three main questions:
1) is it reversible, chemically? (sadly, I'm afraid I already know the answer)
2) what's causing it?
3) can I stop it?

The facts:
1) All negatives 35mm and stored in Printfile sleeves since they were returned from the lab
2) The sleeves have been in archival binders **(or so they were advertised--but the shift seems to be in different branded binders, not just one)
3) The binders have been stored in smoke-free climate control their entire life, not perfectly archival, and I do live in the south (some humidity, and sometimes I stored the binders in a cardboard box), but they were never stored in the attic or basement, and many of the rolls in the neighboring sleeves are in great shape
4) The samples here span 5 years, so I'm fairly certain it wasn't just one bad lab
5) The shift only affects some rolls, even from the same vacation/trip/lab
6) The shifts show up identical on my Pakon, as well as the Noritsu my lab uses

Below are the examples including the dates and stocks used, alongside the original prints for comparison.

**these are not my favorite or best frames, they are the most concise representation of what's happening
**In some cases, I can correct some of them with some serious work, however, the shift is not even across the roll(s), and sometimes uneven within each frame. This is a major shift.

Why????
Can I reverse it?
Can I stop it?

Happy to share more examples, if helpful.

Thank you in advance!!!

July 1995, Kodak Gold 400
1995 print, 2020 scan


December 1997, Kodak Gold 200
1997 print, 2020 scan


January 2000, Agfa HDC 400 Plus
2000 print, 2020 scan

 

[DREW WILEY]

Comes with territory of color neg films, especially if these were commercially developed in a less than ideal manner. Humidity and lack of air circulation accelerates these issues, as might those plastic sleeves. You might be able to salvage negs without symptoms yet, but there's no way to reverse extant damage. You can make semi-corrected digital duplicates.

 

[wiltw]

I have Kodacolor negs taken when I was 12 years old ...I am now almost 70. I also have negs taken when I was 30 years old, and again no shift. And I scanned each of them within the past half dozen years and there was no color shiftT.

Shot when I was 12


Shot when I was 14



Shot when I was 31



The older negs have been stored in the old glassine (paper) sleeves; stored in my dad's old leather shaving case! The ones from 30-40 were stored in the PrintFile sleeve pages. and put into an ordinary binder. So color shift is not 'inherent', it does not 'come with the territory' and does not necessarily require 'archival storage' conditions

 

[Bill Burk]

Do you see it on the film or is it a scanning artifact? Kodak made a Photoshop plug-in called Digital ROC that could help with color shift with age. But the stain might not be easy to fix

 

[Down Under]

My situation/viewpoint is that of someone with many of the same problems - a lot of color shift in E6 slides shot in the 1980s, mostly to blue. Stored in secure (temperature controlled) conditions in so-called 'archival' sleeves kept in acid-free boxes in a non-smoking house with plenty of fresh unpolluted country air. Alas, to no avail. About one in five (20%) of my slides show this shift, also many color negatives from the 1970s-1980s and even into the mid-1990s.

Your first photo shows some shift to magenta, or is/was that a natural 'look' in 1960s Kodacolor? I didn't shoot much color negative film until the '80s, so I'm not sure about this. I do see a lot of magenta in my 1975-1985 (mostly Fuji) negatives, tho.

The second photo appears to have had some post-processing (and certainly sharpening). Is this correct?

The third image has clean whites and looks about what mine are like. Am I right in assuming it's a flash shot? Which explains the edge shadows and the dark background.

Faced with having to try to save several thousand E6 slides, most of them 40 or more years old, I've concluded the only possible way to deal with this is to spend endless hours color-correcting in post-processing - and/or save the worst affected ones as black-and-white conversions to preserve what is on them.

Lastly, a question for those more expert than I am in scanning and post-processing. Is it possible for E6 images to actually lose sharpness as they age?? I recall my photos (shot mostly with a Rolleiflex TLR and a Zeiss Super Ikonta (Tessar f2.8), and some superb if (I think so, anyway) Asian mountain- and seascapes with a Linhof and a 6x6 film back) were rock-sharp when Kodak returned them, but now seem to be significantly less so. IS this an age-related matter - in film or with my eyesight?

Any advice will be most welcome. GBS, I hope you enjoy scanning, you and I are in for a lot of it, me with 100,000+ negatives and slides more so than you if this makes you feel better. Pleasant music helps, also some (but not too much) good wine to ease the despair.

 

[wiltw]

ozmoose,

About those shots I posted, vs. your observations...
I notice the apparent warmth in the first shot of my earlier post, but I cannot recall if the shot was taken near sunset when everything would be inherently warm. So here is another daylight shot taken midday on the same trip to Catalina Island in 1962 as a basis of comparison...I would have sampled the red/white stripped awning to set color balance, so I might have inadvertantly removed a color shift but that should be visiible in the other colors.



Also I do not recall what was done in postprocessing even a half dozen months ago without looking at the settings for that shot. I can tell you that I scanned 'for curiousity sake' to see how the negs had withstood time...I do not recall applying sharpening or any color adjustments, as the goal was not to see 'just how good can I make it?'

The shot taken when I was 31 would have been taken with an OM-1n with a 35-70mm f/3.6 and a non-Olympus (likely Vivitar) non-TTL flash unit, taken in a typical darkened lounge area in the Moorea Club Med.

Most importantly, compared to your shots, none of mine have severe color shifts. Optical dyes DO fade, causing shifts, so I would not expect 'no shift' but having no severe shifts is notable, especially considering my lack of 'store it archival' attention to storage conditions to films shot 57 and 55 years ago.

 

[peter k.]

GBS We need some clarity.. is this positive or color negative film that you are referring to?

 

[NB23]

Negative color film, as well as e-6 film, never claimed to be archival. Back in the day, Ektachrome was known as a film that would not stand the test of time and it would turn blue.
same for negative film; not stable.

Kodachrome was the guarantee of a stable image.

My color films have aged very well except the fact that a lot of them are badly scratched. And yes, a few have weird colors (polaroid 200 negative, mostly).

Back then, it was comon knowledge that if you were after archivavility, then only kodachrome would suit your needs.

 

[koraks]

The 2nd example (dec 97) shows variation across the frame, which suggests that environmental conditions play a role here. Humidity and temperature are the first suspects, but gassing out of materials (sleeves, binders, boxes) cannot be excluded.

Apart from ensuring that storage conditions are optimal, there may be benefit in rewashing the film and treating it with a stabilizer bath, preferably an old fashioned type with formalin.

 

[Down Under]

To my eye your latest posted image shows a very slight shift to magenta - but then someone I discussed this with my email today reminded me that 1970s and 1980s color negative films all had a definite 'color', greenish in Fuji's case, yellow and an annoying red to pink in Agfa's, magenta in Kodak's. So it's very possible that your latest photo is merely showing the natural 'tint' of the particular film. The whites do look very white.

I use Silverfast, I think version 8, which I first bought in 2009 and have stayed with even tho the learning curve was steep and almost drove me up the wall at times (my partner comments this is natural with me, but I'll say no more) until I mastered enough of it to let me do what I have to with my images. It lets me play with eliminating hues and changing colors and restore fading images (|to a degree) more easily than many other software in its price range, I think. I really cannot comment on Photoshop or Lightroom as I've never owned them and I find I can usually do just about as much (bearing in mind that my requirements are fairly basic) as those of my friends who have these more expensive programs. With Silverfast I restore colors (to an extent, not always as much as I would like), shift color hues, and remove scratches and dust spots - it also has Digital Ice but I've not yet used it.

To try to sum up everything I've written, you may be able to salvage many if not most of your negatives and slides by diligently applying yourself to a long and arduous (let's not forget boring) workflow of fiddling and testing and making several copies of each image until you get closest to what you consider was the natural (original) colors and tones. You'll have to make the hard decision, as I did, to devote your time to your best negatives and just be satisfied with a bit of tinkering on your 'seconds'. You rightly commented that too much shifting of any particular color often changes the full color scheme of the overall image - I try to limit my actions to -5 or at most -10 shift in any given direction while carefully watching how the other colors behave. My bugbear after magenta is blue as my Nikkormats and pre-AI/AIS Nikkor lenses seemed to be somehow biased to this color. If I go too far in removing the blue cast, often as not the green comes up and the entire image gets a sickly hue which I dislike. So less is best.

I'm now in my second year of now-and-then scanning and post-processing my collection and I'm finding I have to limit my time at the computer to at most two hours in the mornings if I want to preserve my sanity. So I'm carefully culling (not destroying) images into firsts, seconds and thirds - family images will get my top priority. Having just scanned my entire collection of 20+ slide boxes of Ektachromes shot in Bali in 1972, I'm now sorting my 1975 Southeast Asian trip (30 boxes) and I'll then do my two North American cross-country car trips (1979 and 1982), which should keep me busy for the next year. Indonesia (1975 to 2009 when I largely changed over to digital photography) will then keep me busy for another two years. With luck I can then get down to the seconds.

The best luck to both of us with our projects - hope springs eternal but how I wish life did as well...

 

[DREW WILEY]

Tidbits of incidental personal experience are no substitute for the relatively vast amount of research that's been done on this subject. There are also entire books out there on digital restoration; and in Hollywood it's a career path. There are all kinds of factors involved. Overused fixer and poor washing drastically reduced image permanence long before color film was ever invented. I've seen minilab color work that faded or discolored within a month. Humid conditions accentuate all such issues. Prior to digital options, I'd charge hundreds of dollars apiece to restore people's prized photos. Some had gone through fires, others floods; some had just outright faded.

 

[GBS]

Hey all! Thank you for getting back to me. I’ve been tied up today and unable to log in. I’m going to read through everything and answer any questions that haven’t been answered.

In summary: all references are negative and stocks are listed above the thumbnails. No flash or post processing on any of these. Keep in mind, they are examples and I have more. The frames with even shift are somewhat correctable, but many are not.

Let me read through everything in detail. Thanks so much!!

 

[GBS]

I’m summary, I suspect: poor airflow and possible humidity issues, though slight. It’s bizarre that some got hit, while others in the next sleeve are 100% fine. I wonder if the boxes were not archival, but it’s appearing in more than one box/brand. I know negatives that have far, far outlasted these, so there is something specific that’s hard to pinpoint.

Moving forward, I have to assume they won’t get much worse this year, and soon I’ll know the full extent of the damage and can go from there with digital correction.

I use Memphis Film Lab, and Matt was really kind to give me some old stab, enough to make a quart. Not sure if that’ll be enough if I go that route; I don’t have a total number of affected rolls, yet.

Really appreciate everyone’s support and comments—too many good ones to quote!!

I’ll be back late tonight and all week to further engage. Thanks a ton!

 

[GBS]

Do you see it on the film or is it a scanning artifact? Kodak made a Photoshop plug-in called Digital ROC that could help with color shift with age. But the stain might not be easy to fix

I *think* I can see it in the negative. I know it appears identical on more than one scanner

 

[DREW WILEY]

NB23 - I've just been through quite a stack of my early 4x5 Ektachrome 64 transparencies. Every one of them looks perfect. There is no blue shift whatsoever. But that particular film had a native blue bias to begin with, which a number of landscape photographers prized for creative reasons, and loudly complained when that that film ceased production for sake of "improved" version of Ektachrome.

 

[GBS]

Thanks everyone for the input!

The color shifts I posted about are on negatives and are always towards blue (yellow when printed/scanned) and do no seem to affect other colors, certainly not noticeably.

I'm looking for info on this specific issue. There must be a single culprit (or culprits), considering the color shift is always similar across multiple storage binders and film stocks. Something made them turn blue. I get the possible variables, and have my own speculations.

Some sleeves (many) are in great shape, and the examples I posted are from separate labs, so I can't blame them.

Has anyone seen this, specifically. If so, is there a known cause?

Thank you

 

[DREW WILEY]

Color negs have an orange mask. If that mask fades or discolors differently than the image dyes, it's one potential source of such symptoms.

 

[GBS]

If that mask fades or discolors differently than the image dyes, it's one potential source of such symptoms.

Thanks for the quick reply! I don't see a physical change in the base. I can't be the only one to experience this so I'm going to keep searching until I get to the bottom of it (or give up--but I'm not there, yet).

Still hanging on by a thread that someone has seen this before.

Thanks again!

 

[Mr Bill]

Hi, best source of overall info that you're likely to come across is Henry Wilhelm's encyclopedic book, available for free from his website. As I recall the book was printed prior to the samples you posted, so not directly useful, but the ideas about fading, in general, are valid.

The basic thing is that the dyes in color films are gonna fade over time, some more than others. And it's not unusual to pick up some additional stain. A general rule is that one particular dye in a given film fades faster than the others, so that this dye is the weak link as far as long-term image stability. And there have been huge differences between different films with regard to image stability.

As a general rule, if your negatives have great value, the best thing you could do to help them last longer is to put them into lower temperature storage, with humidity-controlled conditions (read Wilhelm's recs). If you do this you have to be real careful about possible moisture condensation.

There was a time when some of the manufacturers used to publish image-stability data about their films. But at some point I think this turned into a marketing issue. If another company had better stability per testing, they could promote this and even use the competitor's own technical data against them. So such information became mostly secret.

I spent a lot of years with a large chain outfit, and we could get a certain amount of inside test information, but it was all confidential. So the general public, or even pro photographers really have nothing to make judgment on. What we did, in our own facility, was to set up our own abbreviated image-stability testing program. Now, because of the nature of our business, printing high-volume portrait work, our main concern was with the actual prints. (We only held the original film for perhaps 6 months, long enough for people to make additional orders, then after that it was discarded.) Anyway, there was a wide variety in print materials over the years, with a common thing that overall they improved over time.

A little sidenote: I was doing QC work when the current color film process, known as C-41, came out. At one point, at least a handful of year later, a sales guy from someone equipment manufacturer was in my office. He was talking about the early years of C-41, that he had been working in a pro lab at that time, and remarked with that sort of authoritative tone that so many people seem to get, that all of that early film had faded away to nothing. ALL of it, completely faded away. And how, when he had mentioned this to people in such labs they sometimes would go into their files and be surprised that all of THEIR old film was blank. So... I happened to have some very early C-41 film samples in me desk, so said, "Well, let's see." I pulled the file out, opened it up, and... they looked fine. I even took some densitometer readings (in my records were original density readings when that film was new; it was a well-controlled test we had done, including a gray card); the readings were pretty close, but with a definite slight loss in one layer. So the (presumed) B-S "expert" says that, well EVERYONE ELSE'S film had faded, you're the first one that it didn't, etc.

Now, years later, someone from Kodak gave me some image-stability data that they had for several of their films. RememberIng this old sample, I pulled it out. It was one of the films listed. So over the years, every few years or so, I'd pull out the sample and take density readings. My film, held in typical office conditions with controlled temperature and humidity, was tracking right on the money with the Kodak predictions. (They actually showed an "envelope" but my readings were near the center of that.) I continued doing this beyond 30 years, and it still followed the pattern. So these test results showed me that such accelerated testing really was legitimate; it's the so-called Arrhenius testing which is described in Wilhelm's book. Now, for what it's worth, most Arrhenius test results only give an abbreviated result - typically a number of years at room temperature until fade "is objectionable." (The test gives the capabilities to predict dye fading at whatever time and temperature one wants, but this is too complicated for most people. So the normal reporting routine is to say, "well, we think that when the weakest dye fades past a certain proportion of the others that it becomes objectionable, or perhaps just noticeable, and so we report this time duration as the expected "life" of the print, or whatever.

Anyway, it's a complicated subject. For your purposes your best options, assuming valuable negatives, are probably to get high-quality scans now, then find lower temperature storage with controlled humidity. And check for "bad" storage materials (see Wilhelm's book). Best of luck.

 

[GBS]

Best of luck.

Excellent and thorough reply! Thank you! I regret being so ignorant about film chemistry prior to this point.

If I had to guess: they shifted while in binders, in a box, in a closet from, 2012-2017. Still hard to believe the conditions were so poor that they'd shift so drastically, but temp and humidity, along with not truly archival binders are the only variables I can pinpoint that occur across each sample.

I think, in general, while I may never know exactly what caused the blue shift, I believe I should take them out of the protective binders in favor of regular binders, and read up on temp/humidity as it pertains to storage. Or, at least: add some silica to the closed binders.

I appreciate everyone's input dearly. Thank you.

I'm downloading the book as I type.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Often the devil is in the details. Even with allegedly "archival" sleeves or envelopes, whether glassine, paper, or plastic, the placement of folds and seals can be incorrect and place the image in contact with a seam or glue. Alkaline "archival" paper can be bad for many color dyes. Even the right kind of plastic can stick to an emulsion if it is smooth and ferrotype it, sometimes with color effects, or even trapping humidity in the emulsion. There are times fungus activity is not readily apparent like ordinary mildew unless you use a microscope, and some of the dye gets "eaten" along with the gelatin.

 

[NortheastPhotographic]

One thing that many people may not be aware of is the fact that some labs use(d) washless C41 processors. The process goes CD, Bleach, Fix, and then usually 3x stab baths. I'm not sure how stable/unstable this will render C41 films. But I'd be surprised if it had no effect at all...

 

[DREW WILEY]

No effect? Yeah, like never properly processed at all. One hour labs could be awful in that respect. Unstable is an understatement, especially given how some of those discount operations didn't replenish their chemistry nearly often enough.
I once had one of the more conscientious owners of a minilab explain to me how his competition cut corners.

 

[Wallendo]

Since the color shifts are likely due to different dyes fading at different rates, the easiest way to color-correct the scans is to use software with a "levels" control. By adjusting the back and white points for each of the three color channels (red, green, and blue), I have found that decent color balance can usually be obtained. I have done this so often that I can use the keyboard shortcuts without thinking. Although the RGB channels may not completely match the negative dyes, they are fairly similar.

You also may find that the changes made in one image from an individual roll can be applied to all the images in the roll. This technique probably works better if you adjust color temperature and tint instead of levels.

The main downside of these techniques is that you lose and color tint inherent in the film as well as the golden tint from sunrise and sunset.

My personal photos dating back to the 1980's, which I did not store in an archival fashion of any sort until the last 8 years have not had problems, and they have been stored in sometimes very harsh condition. On the other hand, my father had negatives from the 1960's, stored under good conditions, which have had a marked color shift. Most of those were GAF film or Ektachrome. The Kodachromes look brand new.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It all depends. I seen hundreds of faded Kodachromes. Just depends, not only on storage conditions but how much they got projected. I've also seen Kodachrome sheet film shots from the 1940's that look like they were taken yesterday except that the color is even better than what one would expect from film today! I've got 4X5 pre-E6 Agfachromes in my files now 60 years old that are doing well. I've already mentioned that ALL of my early Ektachromes appear in perfect condition. Old color neg film has not fared as well. But there are a multitude of variables, regardless. Just don't confuse "archival" the marketing term with what it takes to study a subject like this in depth.