Storing digital negatives, blotchy patches

I have been making 17x20 negatives on Pictorico, and storing them in 17x20 paper folders I made from silversafe paper from conservation resources that I stack on top of each other in flat boxes. Before I had the silversafe paper I was only using light impressions interleaving tissue.

I just went to reprint some negatives, and there are big blotchy patches that correspond to the ripples in the paper they were in contact with (from both the interleaving tissue and the silversafe paper). It looks like it is coming from humidity in the paper, The blotches can only be seen through the base side of the film (the milky side), and are showing up in the smooth areas of the print.

Has anyone else seen this? and is there a way to get rid of them, or are these negs now toast? (20- 17x20 negs is a lot of toast) I tried air drying them a day before printing, and also with a hair dryer with no positive results.

And, is there a way to store the negatives without getting these bad nasties?

I think I traced the problem to there being too much humidity in the storage paper, and that transfered to the neg, making it milkier than it should be. 15 minutes with a hair dryer on high started to even things out. I now have 7 large negs hanging in a big drying box with a portable radiator heating things up so we will see how they look in the morning.

The question still remains to how these things are best stored.

Richard Boutwell said:

I think I traced the problem to there being too much humidity in the storage paper, and that transfered to the neg, making it milkier than it should be. 15 minutes with a hair dryer on high started to even things out. I now have 7 large negs hanging in a big drying box with a portable radiator heating things up so we will see how they look in the morning.

The question still remains to how these things are best stored.

Click to expand...

Richard,

You may or may not know this but printer ink "outgases" as part of the drying or curing process. I can't quote an accurate length of time for the printed negative to dry as that depends on local conditions and substrate. Never the less properly or normally printed negatives should dry with in 24 hrs. Since I usually don't print on substrate any larger than 8.5x11 I inter-leave digi-negs in bond paper for the first 24 hours.

Keepers are stored in a Clear Bag sleeve and placed in a flat file or archival storage box. Unfortunately I can't advise you for long term storage but I assume that would be similar to ink jet prints - keep them high, dry, and dark.

I know one acquaintance who stored ULF negatives under their bed only to discover one day they were covered in cat urine. Luckily the negatives could be washed and salvaged. I'm not so sure that would be the case with digi-negs.

One other issue of long term storage of digi-negs is record keeping. Recording of pertinent data such as light source, and file location are other issues.

Good luck,

Don Bryant

I let these particular digital negs dry face up at least 48 before putting them in the envelopes, but it was summer in Pennsylvania and was hot and humid, so maybe that is more the issue.

Having a place that I can write the PT/PD mix, exposure, and whatever other notes I might need is the main reason for using the large paper envelopes.

Another thought is just printing the whole addition in one day—you could print an addition of 5-10 in one long day if you are in straight production mode, and not have to worry about long term storage issues (and could then insure consistency throughout). The problem there is the initial cost of several large sheets of paper and the huge amount of PT/PD solutions.

Of course, the benefit of using digital negs is always being able to reprint the file. Like everything else, it just comes down to time and money.

<Richard,
I had exactly the same problem as you, and I've controlled this effect allowing the negatives to cure for several days before archiving them in sleeves.

This problem happened both with pictorico and copyjet

Regards

Manuel GT