negatives from my highschool photo class...

So I recently picked up a scanner and thought it would be fun to scan some of my old negatives from my high school photo class. They've been stored in printfile type pages in binders since processed back in 1988 or so. These were all processed in a gang darkroom using chemicals of dubious purity with the attention to detail that an underachieving high schooler(me) would have given them..

I noticed some have some silvering going on and some have some brownish fog in areas. I've also noticed some brown staining on the associated contact sheets.

I was thinking it would be a good idea to rewash and refix the negs and put them in new negative pages. Any other suggestions?

Thanks!

Give them a good soak in water. Then refix in fresh fix. Test first on a neg that you don't really care about. You should see my students' negatives even after a few months. Many of the sneaky devils skipped the wash. Pulled them from the fixer, and hung them to dry before sleaving them. Lazy.

Andrew O'Neill said:

. You should see my students' negatives even after a few months. Many of the sneaky devils skipped the wash. Pulled them from the fixer, and hung them to dry before sleaving them. Lazy.

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I wasn't that bad, but this was Hawaii and high school... sometimes it was hard to stay focused on things like how many dump and fills have I done.

Dmosher said:

I wasn't that bad, but this was Hawaii and high school... sometimes it was hard to stay focused on things like how many dump and fills have I done.

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At least you didn't have social media back then to distract you!

I'm so glad everyone didn't have a camera back then... at least I was the one taking most of the photos so I have all the blackmail material!!

Andrew O'Neill said:

You should see my students' negatives even after a few months. Many of the sneaky devils skipped the wash. Pulled them from the fixer, and hung them to dry before sleaving them. Lazy.

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Andrew, that still shocks me OK. I came to darkroom work in my late 50s so not a callow youth but I am sure you told them why washing was important. So to an old buffer like me this is akin to telling them that not washing is like taking a slow acting radio active pill. You might feel fine for a few weeks or even months but the end is horrific and cannot be stopped

I've just had an idea. Tell them that next time the culprits will be nominated as the new Frank Bigelows then show them the film DOA with Edmond O'Brien

pentaxuser

Andrew needs to figure out a way to incorporate proper procedures into a social media cel phone ap .

Properly processed, the negatives should keep even if you do NOT employ the 'archival' methodology! I have negatives in glassine sleeves, stored in what was my dad's leather shaving kit, and they look like newly processed, with no discoloration in spite of their 56 years of age!