Fungus on negatives?!

Frank53

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A few years ago I started sc.., well archiving my black and white negatives and found a few rolls that looked to be infected with fungus. The whole surface was covered with thin white threads. Those were not my most important negatives, so I did nothing at that time.
This week I remembered those negatives an searched the internet for a solution and did not find much.
So I thought, nothing to loose, what can I try and came up with toner.
Put the negatives in a tray with water, than 5 minutes in 1:9 selenium toner en normal washing.
The fungus is gone. Contrast has gone up a bit, but it worked.
Frank
 
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BAC1967

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Every now and then I find mold growing on old 8mm cine film (Kodachrome, etc). It can usually be cleaned with little damage to the film. It looks like a white powdery material stuck to the film which sounds different than what you are describing. I use a product called FilmRenew to clean it which seems to work great. FilmRenew will also help with old dried out brittle film. You can soak dried out film in FilmRenew for a few days without damage. I lightly wet a soft cotton cloth and run the film through the cloth between my fingers. After running about 200' to 400' of film through the cloth you will see some emultion on the cloth but not enough to adversely affect the film. I'm not sure how this would translate to still film but it may be an option.

I believe the condition that the film is being stored has a lot to do with the mold formation. Humidity, heat and fluctuating temperatures are not good for film. These conditions will not only form mold, you can also get Vinegar Syndrome (VS) in acetate based film. There is no cure for VS and like mold it will infect your other film being stored nearby.
 

gone

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This is good information. After living in Hawaii and Florida, it's a wonder mine have not had this problem. I would prefer the old glassine sleeves to these clear plastic print files. The glassine is not supposed to be really archival, but my gut feeling is that the print files not only give a healthy surface for mold to grow on, but they trap moisture and outgas contaminants too. Film itself offers a fertile opportunity for mold to feed on.

I think the main issue is having a proper archival box to keep the negs in, as well as having some sort of humidifier where they're kept. Even w/ the fact that you can't readily see what is inside the glassine sleeves like you can w/ print files, I would still prefer them to what looks like a suspect plastic system.

If I had anything that could be considered historic (Ha!), I would make my own sleeves from acid free papers and store the negs in them in a proper manner. Simply sleeving them in plastic files in a 3 ring binder and putting them in a drawer has worked OK for a couple of decades. So far. If I had started on this in my 20's I wouldn't use this system, but at my age I'll probably not outlive the negs. After I'm dead it doesn't really matter.
 
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Gerald C Koch

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Once you remove the surface fungus remember that the films are still infected. Keep them away from other negatives. You have two options; one wet and one dry. You can soak the negatives in a 1 % solution of formaldehyde with a few drops of Photo-Flo added. Five to ten minutes should be enough. Thenn hang them up to dry without rinsing. The second method involves exposing the negatives to formaldehyde gas. Get a bag of SunPac or Digas mildewcide online. Place the negatives and the bag in a larger bag and leave them for a few days. Then hang them up until the gas leaves from them. However it is a good idea to still segregate them as mold spores are VERY hard to kill. These little buggers have been around for millions of years and can live under very adverse conditions. I never depend on all the spores being killed no matter what killing method is used.

http://www.amazon.com/SunPac-Mildewcide-And-Mold-Inhibitor/dp/B007FTQWMO
 
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gone

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Wouldn't high intensity UV light kill the spores? You're right about simply removing the surface mold because, like mushrooms, the real spores lie deeper. I ask this because I have successfully stopped (not removed) the fungus growth in many camera lenses by setting them out in the hot Florida sun w/ the right orientation. The caveat is that lens fungus may not be the same as negative fungus (and probably isn't), but I tend to think that heat and light would do something. To hedge my bet, I think that exposure to anything above 100J/m2 UVC (shortwave UV) should kill most fungal growth varieties.

I found this fascinating tidbit below on the web that mentions that light might also be used to weaken or alleviate fungal growth in living organisms, which sounds very promising. The second link is to a fascinating breakdown of different UV lights and what they do, most of which is pretty scary stuff for us that live in high UV states.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050323131309.htm

http://www.americanairandwater.com/uv-facts/uv-light.htm
 
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jjphoto

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Spores are everywhere. You are breathing them now, so no point expecting to kill them all. It will never happen. The best you can ever do is effect the environment a lens or film is stored in to stop or reduce the chance of fungus growing. By the way, although UVC is the best way to 'kill' spores there is negligible UVC in sunlight (solar radiation) because the atmosphere filters it out. Glass, eg windows, lens elements, also filter out UV below about 350nm. The intensity of UVC, UVB and UVA changes significantly with the height of the sun, time of year and probably a bunch of other factors too so sitting a lens on a window ledge has varying effect. I've never tried UVB lamps but I suspect they will have some effect depending on the length of exposure, but not as effective as UVC which actually breaks RNA in the fungus/spores (interestingly it doesn't kill it, it just can't reproduce).

I have a booklet from Kodak specifically about removing fungus from film. IIRC they warn against wetting film when infected with fungus.
 

Arklatexian

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I once had that booklet (maybe still do somewhere). I had a friend who was having fungus problems in glass-mounted color slides, sealed on all four sides with the red tape that people used for that purpose. I recommended that he remove tape from one side, put that slide in a projector whose light was on. Then let the slide get warm before taking it out. My friend did this to all his slides and the heating and cooling caused air to be pulled into and exhausted from the glass mount. This seemed to stop the growth. It did not get rid of the mycelium that was already inside but did stop new growth by changing the enviroment inside the glass. I wrote Kodak to see if they had any ideas about controlling fungus in a moist enviroment. They wrote me back with several recomendations but finished the letter with a sentence telling me that anything I discovered on my own would be of interest to Kodak......Regards!
 
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Frank53

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If you only want to clean the surface of the film from fungus, you can even use running water (well that's what I remember from my micro biology education. It's 43 years ago and after an internship, I never worked in the field, but It's one of the things I remember)
I think soaking the film in this toner also kills the fungus that found it's way into the emulsion and looking at the example, I think it's clean now. Beside that, I think toner is "film friendly".
Frank
 
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Frank53

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jjphoto said:
Here you go;



Click to expand...
I have enough negatives to try this. They are useless in their present state anyway. Next time I will enlarge the negatives before and after to see if there is any damage visible on the emulsion using selenium toner. At the moment it doesn't look like it.
Frank
 

Piet den Blanken

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hallo Frank
What are your experiences? I have fungus in a lot of my negatives, shooted in de eighties.
Do you think I can tread them as you mentioned? Here I show you one ofe the negativers, the image is about 10 % of the complete image.
Piet
 

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  • schimmel negatief nr 1984424-37.jpg
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Stankula

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Hello everybody,
My name is Christo and I am a new here. My problem is that for a special long term project, this summer I've decided to shoot on one of my favourite films - Fortepan 200 120. I've found on ebay 10 rolls, Did the shooting and after development I discovered that all the rolls were infected with fungus. Do you think I can do something?
Here some examples.
 
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kevs

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Are you sure this is fungus? It doesn't look like fungus to me; it's possibly caused by moisture or poor storage. Fungus would be less-evenly distributed, I think. You never really know what conditions film bought from random strangers has been kept in.

If the mottling is on the negs there's probably not much you can do physically; maybe you could clean them up electronically though. It does kind-of suit the subject, though; nice pictures.
 

Stankula

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So this is not fungus, it is moisture and nothing could be done? I just tried with isopropyl alcohol and no result...Does the selenium wiil help?
 

koraks

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Stankula, this looks like humidity making the backing paper interact with the emulsion, causing mottling. Nothing can be done to repair this. This is one of the risks of using old 120 film.
 

Stankula

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koraks said:
Stankula, this looks like humidity making the backing paper interact with the emulsion, causing mottling. Nothing can be done to repair this. This is one of the risks of using old 120 film.
Click to expand...
Koraks, but the emulsion is at the other side of the film support. The paper touches the back, not the emulsion, isn't that right?
 
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ClareQuilty

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Hi all, I have spent the day researching this subject (fungus or mould damage to negatives) as I have recently discovered quite a few of my black and white negatives infected with a spider-web-like fungus.
I store all my negs in archival Print-file negative sleeves and keep them in an archival acid-free box, believing that these measures would safeguard my negs for the future. The negs that I have found so far that
seem to be infected are at least 25 years old. What I have gleaned from various comments so far is that there is no wholly-agreed upon solution for this problem. From the posts above and from posts on other forums there seem to be five different suggestions: 1/ Soak the negs in Selenium toner mixed 1:9 for 5 minutes. 2/ Soak the negs in 1% formaldehyde with few drops of photo-flow added for 5 minutes. 3/ Soak the film in Tetanal film cleaner. 4/ Clean the film with at least 98% isopropyl alcohol using a soft cloth or photo-chamois. 5/ Clean the film with Fotospeed Film Cleaner (FC50) again using a soft cloth of photo-chamois. Before I embark upon one or all of these chemical strategies, does anyone have experience of this creeping spidery fungus on black and white negs and has anyone had any success with any of the
methods mentioned above? Thank you.
 

ClareQuilty

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I think I have now discovered what caused the growth of mildew/mould on my negs. The mildew only grew on the last neg of each line of six negs held in PhotoFile sleeves. All the sleeves were in an archival box but one edge of the box was against a stone wall (cold). The rest of the room and presumably the box was at room temperature in a centrally-heated house. The positioning of the box against the stone wall encouraged condensation and damp between the box and the wall and hence the growth of mildew/mould.
 

AliG

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Frank53 said:
View attachment 157391

Before and after "treatment"
Click to expand...
Just trying to restore some negatives (HP5) taken in 1978 so really interested in this.
I developed the film myself using Paterson chemicals which were usually out of date and over used.
Their appearance is exactly the same as this image. The results you show are stunning so I would really appreciate your opinion on how to restore them.
Cheers
Al
 

Sirius Glass

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A few scratches on the negative.
 
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