Mold on 50-year-old Undeveloped Film?

AgX · Feb 3, 2022

Steve Cohen said:
View attachment 275536

Mold yields negative density on the negative after processing, and thus positive density on the succeeding print.
Your images though shows negative densities in the print

Donald Qualls · Feb 3, 2022

I was thinking those look almost like static discharge -- in any case, something appears to have either fogged the film in those branching marks, or remained on the film and partially blocked light during scan/print.

AgX · Feb 3, 2022

Concerning structure they rather look like mold than static discharge.

Steve Cohen · Feb 3, 2022

Matt, that's great news! Thanks! I've been banned from the lab that did it (nicely, no argument, but still) because they don't want their soup contaminated. I still have 16 rolls left to do. I'm going to develop a couple myself in a friend's darkroom in the next couple of weeks. Which of course, leads to the question of how to avoid static discharge when I load the reels. (The film was not stored in a camera -- just in a box, along with the other rolls.) You don't think that I would have success unrolling it VERY slowly? Or discharging the cassette to ground before opening it, or something of the sort? I'm hesitant to do it in a moist environment for the reasons you mention, but it's certainly possible (I'll load the rolls in a bathroom and could run the shower beforehand...).

Steve Cohen · Feb 3, 2022

Sorry, guys -- I didn't see all the responses when I posted. Thanks to all of you.

Steve Cohen · Feb 3, 2022

For what it's worth, the film is completely smooth when examined under a loupe. There is no sense of build-up or physical distortion -- on either the base or the emulsion side.

MattKing · Feb 4, 2022

The static discharge isn't happening at time of development. It is happening in the camera, as the film peals away from itself whenever you advance a frame.
There really isn't much you can do to prevent it.

AgX · Feb 4, 2022

Static discharge can happen at any stage, even at processing, before the actual development. But unless special static means are employd, in general the climate is of importance.

Ivo Stunga · Feb 4, 2022

If static discharge is a phenomenon most experienced in dry environment, wouldn't loading this film completely submerged help? That'll at least exclude static from occurring when loading it in tank.

The truth is, this does look a lot like mycelium to my eyes = baked in emulsion = enjoy!

Steve Cohen · Feb 4, 2022

Thanks so much everybody -- what a great resource this site is! I plan to develop a couple of rolls in the next couple of weeks and I'll report back. My plan is to ground myself and the canister before opening it, and then unroll it VERY slowly all the while looking very carefully (with fully dark-adjusted eyes), looking for telltale sparks. I'll also be sniffing to see if I can detect the smell of mold. And I'll be keeping my fingers crossed. (I could also crudely raise the humidity in the room where I'll load the tanks -- it's a bathroom and I'd run the shower on hot for a few minutes before starting to work.)

Question -- if it's mold, how does it become black in the negative and white on the print? Where is the mold -- base or emulsion?

Also, on a completely different topic. I'll be using a friend's darkroom and his fixer is unhardened (Illford Rapid Fix). Do you all consider that to be a good or bad idea?

Again, thanks so much for all your help.

Don_ih · Feb 4, 2022

Mould eats the gelatin in the film emulsion - that ends up black on a print.

Grounding yourself won't do anything if static electricity discharges between paper and film as it's unrolled. Loosening the roll in your hand before fully unrolling it may help (rotate the spool while holding the backing paper still so the roll gets "fatter"). Frankly, though, I really doubt any static would imprint the film at present, since it would have slowed down to about iso12. That static may have been there since the film was used.

It will not be very easy to get the film onto developing spools, by the way.

Donald Qualls · Feb 4, 2022

Steve Cohen said:
if it's mold, how does it become black in the negative and white on the print?

One possibility is if the mold exuded some sulfide chemical, it could chemically fog the emulsion. Don't know about mold, but a lot of decomposition bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide (which absolutely *will* fog film).

Sirius Glass · Feb 4, 2022

I had static electricity when I advanced film very quickly on a very cold dry windy day. In such conditions advance the film slowly.

AgX · Feb 4, 2022

Donald Qualls said:
One possibility is if the mold exuded some sulfide chemical, it could chemically fog the emulsion. Don't know about mold, but a lot of decomposition bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide (which absolutely *will* fog film).

My thought too, but all examples from the industry show negative densities on the negative. It would be interesting to look at the gelatin by microscope.

Concerning static electricicity, its artefacts have a differnt structure,and the image density should be higher.

Ivo Stunga · Feb 5, 2022

Donald Qualls said:
One possibility is if the mold exuded some sulfide chemical, it could chemically fog the emulsion. Don't know about mold, but a lot of decomposition bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide (which absolutely *will* fog film).

As a slide shooter I have harder time visualizing positive/negative densities on film, but here's a quote from the same Wiki article I linked above:
"Through the mycelium, a fungus absorbs nutrients from its environment. It does this in a two-stage process. First, the hyphae secrete enzymes onto or into the food source, which break down biological polymers into smaller units such as monomers. These monomers are then absorbed into the mycelium by facilitated diffusion and active transport."

Gelatin is food, got used as a food source, got changed chemically and probably somewhat physically in the process. If the mycelium is dead, its decomposition products could've introduced additional changes.

I like URBEX, so visiting defunct factories and fallout shelters has exposed me to some of the effects of mold/decomposition on various materials.
I have found Soviet Civil Defense slide films with instructions what to do in case of chemical, biological or nuclear attack. These rolls of film were found in fallout shelter under a well known Soviet Hi-Fi producer, it's very moldy in three. All of the rolls had mold on them, colors faded, cracked or image gone altogether. All of that damage was a permanent structural damage, washing just removed debris and looser emulsion.

You can do nothing about it but enjoy. And edit digitally if clean image is so important.

Steve Cohen · Feb 5, 2022

Thanks, folks. I'll have more to report soon, as I'll develop a few more rolls in a friend's darkroom.

My friend has been using Ilford Rapid Fixer, which is non-hardening formula. Do you all have any concerns about using that on old film? I can also get Kodafix, which would have hardener.

Thanks again for all the help and insight.

HowieP · Feb 5, 2022

This has absolutely nothing to do with this very interesting discussion but, for the record, this game took place on September 6, 1964 and the mediocre Dodgers beat the horrendous Mets 4-3 in front of 25,545 fans. 1964 was the first year I rooted for my home team which is why I was interested in the photo's contents. The larger than expected crowd can be explained as it was the Mets' first year at Shea Stadium and the Dodgers still had a lot of fans in New York having moved only 7 years earlier. That's Bobby Klaus and Roy McMillan standing near second base, and Larry Elliott and Joe Christopher in center and left field respectively.

tokam · Feb 6, 2022

Of course it's emulsion damage due to the action of mould and its byproducts. This disrupts the light path through the emulsion just as do scratches and dust.

See the samples below. Shot on FP4 in 1980. The negs printed fine in 1980 with no sign of damage. The scans are from a Coolscan 5000 ED with no post processing for cleanup, levels, curves etc. Viewing the negs through a loupe didn't reveal the damage as it was in the denser sky part of the image. In the second image a crop of the sky clearly shows the fungal tracks which weren't there in 1980 when the film was processed and certainly not static discharge.

Now for the crop of the sky.

Check out the little ' spider' in the lower right part of the image. Mould colony branching out?

Ivo Stunga · Feb 6, 2022

Or a single spore starting its mycelium.

+ A question of nature: is it at all possible that this could be static? Because charges need to be accumulated before they can be fired and I just don't see sparks flying off this much in my mind's eye. Static should produce few, but very pronounced "lighting strikes". Have done this on purpose by using piezoelectric spark clicker from lighter to get "lightnings" on my film. Best results were on old slide film, as the color depends on what layers the spark traveled through.

But this is packed. With fungal growth/mycelium.

AgX · Feb 6, 2022

We have talked abaut the structure (pattern) of such artefacts, of the pos/neg densiy issue, but not explicetely on the width of these traces. With mold this should be one given width.

Ivo Stunga · Feb 6, 2022

AgX said:
With mold this should be one given width.

Are you sure? Because just like with tree branches and blood vessels - things get smaller and more branched out, so the width changes.

AgX · Feb 6, 2022

Well, I got the impression so far. But your samples seem to proof me wrong.

Steve Cohen · Feb 6, 2022

Howie P -- thanks for contributing that detail and the names of the players. But what about the second shot I posted? Looks to me like somebody got into a pickle between third & home. Any info about that?

Tokam -- okay, it's mold, but it's in the latent image, unlike your example, which is in the developed image. All indications point to the idea that developing the roll removed the living mold -- there's no trace of it upon inspection with a loupe.

tokam · Feb 6, 2022

Since last post I have been checking hundreds of scans of slides I have done for myself and others dating back to the early 1950's. Probably half of them had fungal damage and in most cases the mould tracks appeared darker on the scanned slides, just as dust and fingerprints do. I have a few cracker examples where the emulsion has probably gone completely and there are large yellow starbursts on the scanned image - I haven't even tried to clean them up in post processing. In your case a very soft Spot Healing brush in your favourite editing program could make a big improvement. Just takes time.....

Sirius Glass · Feb 6, 2022

OP, move to a location with less humidity such as Uluru.

Mold on 50-year-old Undeveloped Film?

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