managing "silvering out" on old negatives?

[pdeeh]

I'm scanning a few rolls of old (black and white, ~50 years old) negatives for a friend and the latest shows what I would describe as "silvering out" on the emulsion side.

That is, it shows a quite reflective silver-blue sheen on the first half-dozen or so frames. It is FP3, by the way.

They are not intrinsically valuable, but they are part of a family archive only recently come to light, so I would want to be quite conservative. I'll be making contact sheets anyway

I'm presuming this is as a result of insufficient, or otherwise improper, fixing and/or washing plus poor storage, though I'm not clear what the mechanism is (is it the formation of Silver sulphide?)

Is there anything that can be usefully done to help, if not to remove the problem, then at least to stabilise the situation so it does not worsen?

I have searched and found the odd suggestion that rapid fixer + citric acid might ameliorate the problem (at the expense of some density).

If the best advice is, scan them then put them in fresh archival sleeves, that's fine.

thanks in advance for any informed advice

 

[Bob Carnie]

I think the proper answer would come from a restoration expert, I am not, but I would hesitate to putting the film into any liquid without taking out maybe one frame and seeing what happens.

If the emulsion does not immediately run off the base then I would maybe considering re fixing the negatives , hypo clearing and washing..

I must caution that my advice on this is due to a lesson well learned about 10 years ago , and I would hate for you to experience the same.

Bob

ps.. restoration experts are not common , you may want to enquire at your local museum about finding one.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

The silvering that you see is from reflected light and may not affect the scans. I would fist see how they turn out. At the very worst you will lose only a bit of time.

 

[removed account4]

hi pdeeh

i was gifted 2 or 3 boxes of old negatives that
belonged to a firebug. he photographed fires all over the place.
died, and had no family just a friend who was going to dumpster all
the film and glass plates and cameras and prints and i found him online
thanks to an apug friend. i went through all the film last year and it is
all like yours, silvery greenish blue. i am interested to hear what you will do with them
( if anything at all ! ) i've hundreds if not thousands of negatives like this ...

- john

 

[NB23]

Bad storage.

Without hesitation, I'd wash the neg for 5 minutes, refix, hypo clear, wash.

However, this would ensure archival but won't restore what's lost. The silvering won't disappear.

In other words, it will simply stop any further degradation.

I wouldn't bother imo.

 

[mike c]

I have a lot of old negs from my great uncle about 75 to 50 years old, some of those have some silvering. Toke a few of them and ran them through a stop bath and then fixer and hypo clear which seemed to help "clear" them , they are mostly on the old nitrate film and some on safety film (which I believe is still nitro based).Keep them in a metal cabinet in the garage as they are a fire hazard.

 

[Ian Grant]

Remember that 50 years ago film emulsions were very much softer when wet, even though it may have been fixed in a hardening fixer that still doesn't mean it's as robust as most modern films.

When I did restoration work for a museum in the early 70's if a print had to be re-fixed it went into a formaldehyde based hardening bath first. Later I had to restore or rather stabilize a lot otfprints my grand mother had stored in a supposedly dry cellar. (Unknown to anyone there was a stream under a flagstone and at times it was very damp). Thee prints had mold, emulsion missing, the hardener bath prevented any further decay,

Where an image had silvering on the surface prints were swabbed very gently with dilute ammonia, not sure I'd like to do that with a negative though. A trick with prints when copying is dampen the silvered surface then re-photograph the amount of actual silver on the surface is very small.

Ian

 

[pdeeh]

What surprised me when looking at these older negatives is that there appears to be fungal growth in the emulsion as well.

I had understood that in the case of black and white negatives, the biocidal properties of Silver would have discouraged this. Having said that, these have been in a dark and unheated outhouse for 3 decades, and perhaps before that were not well stored either, so fungi has had every opportunity to nosh on the gelatin.

Presumably a wash in a solution of DI water and formalin would both harden the emulsion and deal with the fungus?

 

[Ian Grant]

Yes Deionised water with a few drops of formalin will kill the fungus.

Ian