Negs and alcohol

George Collier · Nov 8, 2008

A few weeks ago, in talking about finishing negs, someone stated that he does a dip in 90% or 91% isopropyl alcohol before hanging up. Over the years, living in southern climates, I have had occasional problems with a kind of light fungus inhabiting the emulsion of older negs, usually seen more easily in sheet film, even though stored in Printfile material, in books, and on a dry shelf.
Years ago I reached someone in Kodak's conservation area, and was told that cleaning them with as pure a solution of isopropyl alcohol as I could find would be best. I found some at 90 or 91%, used cotton, great care, and for the most part, was able to remove much of the stuff.
Every once in a while I discover another neg hosting some such stuff, and wondered if I could actually bathe the neg in a small tray with the alcohol, swabbing gently with cotton swabs, so I tried it with 3 unimportant negatives. Seems to be ok, dries quickly (like, right now!)
The alcohol in the tray evaporates quickly, but it does a thorough job of removing any intrusive stuff from the emulsion.
Anyone know any reason not to do this?

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2008

Yeah, the fumes are not good for you and IPA is flammable.

Take care.

PE

Poohblah · Nov 8, 2008

i've always heard that isopropyl alcohol should be diluted to 20% or less before soaking negs in the solution... but what do i know!?

nyoung · Nov 8, 2008

I've used common drugstore variety rubbing alcohol to clean negatives a few times - Tri-X and HP5 - with no ill effects. I also think I used Edwal No-Scratch - which I think was mostly linseed oil - after the alcohol cleaning. BTW wasn't there a film quick dry wash soution on the market that was mostly alcohol?

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2008

Denatured alcohols can cause a deposit on film. To demonstrate this, place a few drops of the denatured version into a small quantity of water. If it becomes cloudy, then it contains the kind of denaturant that you should not use to clean film.

PE

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2008

You should not use concentrated alcohol with color film products. It can affect the color image quality and the image stability. You can use concentrated alcohol with B&W films.

PE

mongo141 · Nov 8, 2008

Photo Engineer said:
You should not use concentrated alcohol with color film products. It can affect the color image quality and the image stability. You can use concentrated alcohol with B&W films.

PE

Amen!, The water around here is hard enough to float a bowling ball, so to keep from having those " awful water spots" to quote an old commercial, I have been using a final rinse of about 50/50 70% IP and distilled water with a couple or so drops of wetting agent to make a Liter. Been doing this for years with B/W negs with nice clean negs as a result. I don't know how well it will work with color negs, I have just never tried it.

Kevin Kehler · Nov 8, 2008

I follow Les McLean's suggestion, where I throw a capful of Photoflow (or WashAid) plus a capful of 99% isopropyl alcohol in a 2 liter container, fill with water and then have a 1-2 minute soak before hanging B&W films with a light squeegee finger action (haven't tried it with color since I send E-6 to the lab); never had a problem with water spots since. I also use the same stuff for cleaning negatives, dries really quick with no residue. Where I have heard of problems is where people don't get the purest IPA possible (my drugstore sells 99% and for a few pennies less, 70%); I don't know what the filler is on the lesser percentage (they say it is distilled water) but you want the purest IPA possible.

eric · Nov 8, 2008

I put Isoproply alcohol with my PHotofo. How much? I don't know, I just pour a little bit.
not only does it make the negs dry a little faster (not like I'm going to go cut them and proof them and make prints super fast anyway), but it also keeps critters from growing in the bottle.

nworth · Nov 8, 2008

Kodak once marketed a transparency cleaning solution that was good for use with Kodachrome and E1 and E2 Ektachrome. They said what was in it on the label, but that was too long ago to remember. Does anyone know?

Photo Engineer · Nov 8, 2008

nworth said:
Kodak once marketed a transparency cleaning solution that was good for use with Kodachrome and E1 and E2 Ektachrome. They said what was in it on the label, but that was too long ago to remember. Does anyone know?

Yes.

PE

Nicholas Lindan · Nov 9, 2008

I dilute PhotoFlo 1:9 with 91% isopropanol to make a stock solution that is more easily made up 1:19 with distilled water at 12ml/8oz for rinsing film. The final concentration of alcohol is less than 5%. I don't think it contributes much to drying speed but it does seem to help the PhotoFlo, though usually it takes ~10%+ alcohol to affect the way water flows, viz 'tears' in a wine glass.

I find if I make the stock with water then growth will develop over time.

George Collier · Nov 9, 2008

A redirect for PE - what is "denatured", vs 91% isopropyl.
Also, I had heard once that 99%, or pure iso alc was illegal, which is the reason for the 91% - true?
For cleaning negs, ones needing more than a surface cleaning, would it make more sense to use a 50 / 50 of isopropyl and water, to reduce the evaporating and flamability? Would you add PFlo to this?

Photo Engineer · Nov 9, 2008

Denatured alcohol is usually ethanol with an ingredient in it that causes one to become violently ill if they drink it. Sometimes IPA is also denatured by mixing it with other alcohols for economy. Some samples of IPA seem to contain up to 10% of other higher alcohols. If you place some IPA on your hand and rub it, if it feels greasy to you it probably has 10% or so of something else in it. When rubbed onto film, you may see a film.

Many denaturants precipitate out when the alcohol is added to water. These are NG for film.

Ethyl alcohol comes as 95% or 99% with the latter being illegal in some states and both being illegal in some states. All versions must be denatured for sale in these states. The high percentage alcohols are usually contaminated with benzene and water, so I consider them all undrinkable. The 99% ethyl alcohol is called "Absolute Alcohol" and the 1% is usually benzene. The 95% is sold as is and in some states is sold under the brand name "Everclear".

PE

johnnywalker · Nov 9, 2008

I thought "Everclear" was sold as drinking alcohol in Alaska! No wonder my brain is foggy, even after all these years.

Photo Engineer · Nov 9, 2008

Ahh, but Everclear is made and distilled from the pure fermented starting material and therefore contains no benzene. It cannot be made at 99% or anything much higher than 95% without benzene.

You see, to purify alcohol above about 95%, you need to form an azeotrope. At 95%, there is a stable alcohol/water azeotrope of 95:5, but higher amounts of alcohol require a trinary azeotrope of alcohol + water + benzene and the highest ratio of alcohol takes place at about 99% alcohol, 1/2% or so of water and 1/2% or so of benzene. That is how it is done industrially.

PE

Photo Engineer · Nov 9, 2008

Try these two links:

http://www.ucc.ie/academic/chem/dolchem/html/comp/ethanol.html

http://www.springerlink.com/content/r16v357rt3u86475/

PE

JG Motamedi · Nov 9, 2008

There are high purity versions of isopropyl which are used for electronics which may be more suited for this, however I have found Everclear, or any other variety of potable Ethyl Alcohol to work better for these sorts of purposes than denatured or isopropyl alcohol.

analogsnob · Nov 9, 2008

At the newspaper we would routinely dry B&W film with denatured ethanol. It dried the film quick but sometimes would leave a milky appearance. The negs printed so we didn't care but it couldn't have been good for it.

In the color lab we used electronics grade isopropyl alcohol or naptha (lighter fluid) to clean both color and B&W film and found that usually rewetting with water (usually with some rubbing with the well wetted ball of the finger) and drying with photoflo or stabilizer was A very effective by itself for cleaning and B often required to remove cleaning marks from our other handiwork. We also used PEC-12 which proved again and again the guys that made it were smarter than us.

Photo Engineer · Nov 9, 2008

Using alcohol or naptha will cause smearing of the image in color films and also loss of color. The dyes dissolve in the naptha or alcohol. We used to remove dyes from films that way for analysis!

Very bad.

The milky look is due to the denaturant as I mentioned above.

Again, very bad.

PE

michaelbsc · Nov 9, 2008

johnnywalker said:
I thought "Everclear" was sold as drinking alcohol in Alaska! No wonder my brain is foggy, even after all these years.

Everclear has the federal tax paid, so there is no legal requirement to denature it. Everclear is ethyl alcohol, or ethanol. Isopropyle alcohol, isopropanol, is what is regularly called Rubbing Alcohol in the US.

Meth is one radical, methane and methanol. (Know as "wood alcohol" when I was a child.)
Eth is two radicals, ethane and ethanol. (Most ethane is snapped up by the petrochemical plants as a feed stock for plastics, so it's unusual on the consumer market.)
Prop is three radicals, Propane and Propanol (or Isopropanol).
But (long u sound in English) is 4 radicals, Butane and Butanol or (butyl alcohol)

Only Ethanol is consumable by mammals without either sickness or death. But without the sin tax payment, governments the world over require suppliers to "denature" the product to render it non-consumable.

MB

Paul Verizzo · Nov 9, 2008

In college, I would buy some Everclear and Ethyl (denatured) Rubbing Alcohol. Dumpt the latter, rinse the bottle and refill it with the former. Right under the ole authoritarian radar, right under their noses......

Photo Engineer · Nov 9, 2008

We used to mix the absolute alcohol (never mind contaminants) with orange juice.

Once, a few bottles went missing from our "safe" so the professor put some yellow phenolphthalien into the absolute alcohol. The students involved returned to class in a few days as 90 pound weakings and the professor gave a lecture on the physiologoical effects of yellow phenolphthalien.

I'll leave it to y'all to look this one up.

I warn you, it is too much fun to not make this a learning experience.

PE

gainer · Nov 9, 2008

Grain neutral spirits can kill in two ways if you get enough. It almost got a friend of mine, a Pre-Med student, who celebrated his graduation to the point that he was convinced he could fly like Superman and was about to fly out of the 3rd floor window of the Delta Tau Delta frat house. Fortunately, some of the brothers restrained him.

spb854 · Nov 10, 2008

AAHHH....phenolphthalien.

What fun I had with that when I was a chemistry major. (Decided to go into pharmacy later on.)

It also dissolves in Bacardi 151 rum......just to let you know.

For those that don't..........it WAS the active ingredient in Ex-Lax.

Steve

Negs and alcohol

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