Colour Film Photography - Colours fading

[p.giannakis]

As some of you know, i have spent some time this year sorting out my slides and colour negative pictures from the 90's-early 2000s. One thing that is obvious is that after those 25-30 years colours start fading.

Slides are not too bad. They are mostly Kodak Ektachrome 100 but there are some 200 also and some Fuji Velvia 50 and Fuji Sensia. The Ektachrome 200 appear to show some colour shift but nothing too bad.

On the other hand, colour negative is atrocious. I have kept them all in negative sleeves and weather in Athens is quite dry so there is no mould or anything. Out of them, Kodak Ektar 100 has done well overall and Gold 100 is salvagable but other negatives like Kodak VR100, Fuji Reala, Kodak Gold 200 or Agfacolour Optima show colour shifts or colour hue that barely make them usuable any more; i need a lot of time of editing on GIMP to make them look presentable (although sometimes damage is beyond repair).



This taken with Ektar 100 - Ektar shows usually a shift from blue to green - skies look slightly green but easy to correct. This picture is taken in Aug 1994 - exactly 30 years ago.



This taken with a Kodak VR100. Pretty much unusuable. Taken in June 1997.

I am thinking about the people currently shooting colour negative and what they might find out in 20 years. But is there a reason for some films to do better than others? ISO speed? Developing process?

Any ideas?

 

[wlewisiii]

Pretty much just the emulsion itself. It's one of the main reasons Kodachrome was so stable - the way the three color layers were put together, they didn't degrade the way the dyes in more modern (aka C41) films do. If you want color negative film to last, scan it when new and then preserve the scan as if it were a digital original.

 

[Glenn2]

I didn’t use yellow box colour films very much during my early days shooting in the seventies. Some Kodachrome and Ektachrome, but mostly Agfa for colour. Found it easier to process and print in my home darkroom. Seems I made a wise choice, the Agfa material has stood up very well and scans of stuff fifty years plus are still good. Only problem I had with Agfa was a roll from Thailand that had been exposed to excessive temperature and became reticulated. The scanner (CS5000) using ICE infrared channel was able to subtract the reticulation from the image almost like magic, was very impressed.

Here’s a 1971 shot on Agfa CNS 80 asa ….

 

[p.giannakis]

I didn’t use yellow box colour films very much during my early days shooting in the seventies. Some Kodachrome and Ektachrome, but mostly Agfa for colour. Found it easier to process and print in my home darkroom. Seems I made a wise choice, the Agfa material has stood up very well and scans of stuff fifty years plus are still good. Only problem I had with Agfa was a roll from Thailand that had been exposed to excessive temperature and became reticulated. The scanner (CS5000) using ICE infrared channel was able to subtract the reticulation from the image almost like magic, was very impressed.

Here’s a 1971 shot on Agfa CNS 80 asa ….

Beautiful picture Glen. That is point I am making, certain films did better than others and I suspect slower iso preserved colours better than 400iso. But that is just my guess - no proof I am afraid.

 

[Cascadilla]

As some of you know, i have spent some time this year sorting out my slides and colour negative pictures from the 90's-early 2000s. One thing that is obvious is that after those 25-30 years colours start fading.

Slides are not too bad. They are mostly Kodak Ektachrome 100 but there are some 200 also and some Fuji Velvia 50 and Fuji Sensia. The Ektachrome 200 appear to show some colour shift but nothing too bad.

On the other hand, colour negative is atrocious. I have kept them all in negative sleeves and weather in Athens is quite dry so there is no mould or anything. Out of them, Kodak Ektar 100 has done well overall and Gold 100 is salvagable but other negatives like Kodak VR100, Fuji Reala, Kodak Gold 200 or Agfacolour Optima show colour shifts or colour hue that barely make them usuable any more; i need a lot of time of editing on GIMP to make them look presentable (although sometimes damage is beyond repair).

View attachment 4843591

This taken with Ektar 100 - Ektar shows usually a shift from blue to green - skies look slightly green but easy to correct. This picture is taken in Aug 1994 - exactly 30 years ago.


View attachment 4843592
This taken with a Kodak VR100. Pretty much unusuable. Taken in June 1997.

I am thinking about the people currently shooting colour negative and what they might find out in 20 years. But is there a reason for some films to do better than others? ISO speed? Developing process?

Any ideas?

I do think that processing and washing can make a difference, and some labs have been known to cut corners on wash times to save money. The insidious aspect of this is that the pictures may look fine when the customer picked them up, but won't last as long as they should.

 

[Retro-Grouch]

Interesting that this post appeared at the same time as Jason Schneider's post about Kodachrome. That was the gold standard for longevity, if not archival permanence. I think that the films from the major manufacturers were more stable; I have Kodachrome transparencies from the early Seventies and Fujichromes from the early Eighties that look like new. I also have Anscochrome and Agfachrome transparencies, stored under the same conditions, that are all faded disasters. Just an observation.
As Pan points out, the problem seems far more acute with color negative films; I don't know anywhere near enough about film manufacturing technology to suggest a reason. I would like to suggest that color shooters stick with transparency film, but that's not very realistic these days. There's Ektachrome 100, and, when you can grab them, some Fuji stocks that may (or may not) represent the last of Fuji's production, kept frozen and released in dribs and drabs. There's quite a rumor mill on that topic, and committing to shooting transparency film is probably too limiting and anxiety-provoking for most folks. I have, but I'm weird.
Ultimately, for me as a color shooter, I've accepted that nothing lasts, and all things pass. I store my work carefully and make scans of the best stuff, but the digital files are just as vulnerable in their own way. This could be seen as depressing, but no more (and no less) so than our own mortality. It just is. Age gives a certain perspective on these things!

 

[Tuna]

I started up and ran photo labs from 1983 to 1999 and processed all my color film in those processors - they were Copal processors. We were very busy averaging around 70-100 rolls a day in all my labs. With automatic chemical replenishment keeping the chemistry fresh at all times and strict temperature controls being monitored, the developed results were consistent. I primarily ran Reala and Ektar in those days and all my negs look great as far as any noticeable color shifts. I also shot some Konica color film that doesn’t look so good but that film was crap then and no surprise it is crap now. A lot of color film in those days was done in a dip and dunk style or possibly developed by hand and I’m wondering if that may have added some inconsistency to the process for many.

That being said, as one poster already said, nothing lasts forever. So now that I’ve retired from day-to-day working I have been spending much of my spare time digitizing all my old negs to hopefully preserve them both for retaining their appearance before fading as well as for my kids and grandkids to see what the heck I was up to with all those cameras after I am long gone…

 

[Retro-Grouch]

I started up and ran photo labs from 1983 to 1999 and processed all my color film in those processors - they were Copal processors. We were very busy averaging around 70-100 rolls a day in all my labs. With automatic chemical replenishment keeping the chemistry fresh at all times and strict temperature controls being monitored, the developed results were consistent. I primarily ran Reala and Ektar in those days and all my negs look great as far as any noticeable color shifts. I also shot some Konica color film that doesn’t look so good but that film was crap then and no surprise it is crap now. A lot of color film in those days was done in a dip and dunk style or possibly developed by hand and I’m wondering if that may have added some inconsistency to the process for many.

That being said, as one poster already said, nothing lasts forever. So now that I’ve retired from day-to-day working I have been spending much of my spare time digitizing all my old negs to hopefully preserve them both for retaining their appearance before fading as well as for my kids and grandkids to see what the heck I was up to with all those cameras after I am long gone…

All the quality control in the world may not make a difference, though I certainly want it maintained! Sometimes I think that permanence is just a crap shoot. Case in point:
A couple of months ago I was in the Santa Fe Museum, where amongst other things, there was a Richard Misrach photo from his Desert Cantos series, dating from the early Eighties. No doubt it had been stored under the best of conditions, as it had historical and collector's value. The print looked horrible, like one of those snapshots of the latest mullet haircut that's been sitting in a barber's sunlit window for decades.
Conversely, I have Kodacolor prints of my sister's wedding in 1968 (shot myself, with my Exakta!) that are sitting in a cheap photo album that has been stored under anything but archival conditions. They are still perfect.
Go figure...

 

[DownUnder]

I have the very same problem. Inconsistent fading. Most of my home-processed negatives and slides from the 1960s - even the notoriously unstable Anscochrome film available to us Canadians in the early '60s when I set up my home darkroom and started to experiment with all those 'odd' processes - have stood the test of time with what I can only describe as remarkable luck.

Like many of us, my Kodachrome has mostly survived well. Ditto some (but not all) Ektachrome. Early Fuji, Agfa, Konica etc etc stock, not so good. Altho' by some miracle I have Agfa slides from my sojourn in Bali in 1972 that are as good as new.

Films I had processed in Kodak labs (Kodachrome, Ektachrome, some color negative stock) has survived best. Obviously their quality control was top of the line. Kodachrome I shot in the USA in 1979 and 1982 and had processed by private custom labs, now shows slight signs of color shifting, tho' the sharpness is there. Ditto Ektachrome from those two trips. Odd, but there it is.

Like Pan and many others of us, many of my 1970s and 1980s color negatives have not fared as well and are now showing signs of deterioration, not so much fading as major color shifts. In the late '90s until I wised up to what was going on, I had my slide films (mostly Fuji) processed by a custom lab in Surabaya, Indonesia. I would drop off my films in the morning and get the processed films (in plastic folders) that evening. Fortunately for me I changed almost all those films to archival plastic sheets, which have miraculously kept my negatives in reasonably good condition. Those I left in the original lab folders are badly faded.

So yeah, all my negs are now fading or the colors have changed to the point that while I can still scan reasonable images, I find it best to do them as B&W and not have to fiddle around for endless hours with post processing to bring the colors back to their original. For those I want to keep most, I do one color and one B&W scans. the color scans take me a fair while to set up (= play with the different color settings) and I often have to do a few scans. The B&W, quick and easy. Worth noting, this, if one is time-poor.

Okay, so that lab did the dirty work on me by cheapskating on one or all of their E6 process. Too bad - for me. The lab is now long gone, and even if it was still around, what could I do about it? They did what they did to save money, but I stupidly went for the cheapest option for my processing. I had the same problem with color negative films I had done in Bali in the 1980s. I reckon scanning all this will take me the best part of two years, and fill up at least one if not two portable hard disks for storage. Woo hoo...

So you are now faced with a lot of scanning. Many of your now-faded color negatives may still scan quite well in monochrome. At least you will have the images, and the memories will be intact for as long as the scans survive.

It may be a small consolation to you as you hover over your scanner for the next part millineum that we are basically all in the same boat. A classic case of misery loves (and certainly has) company.

I recall Henry Wilhelm had (has) a lot of interest to say about film image permanence. For anyone interested, his web site is still around - Wilhelm Imaging Research. Also an interesting if brief article about him in Wikipedia. .

I no longer use color films and I'm also about to wind down my B&W film stocks which I've kept refrigerated for decades, including bulk rolls of Kodak Tri-X, Plus-X and Panatomic-X so old as to now even be family heirlooms. I'm told this film is now rare. My partner has suggested I should flog it all off on Ebay and fund us to a gala around the world cruise...

 

[JohnWolf]

Out of curiosity, I located some 30-year old Gold 200 in my archive. No significant color shift. Maybe a little fading, but that's hard to tell.

Back then I shot print film for family stuff and for the rest used slide or BW film. I went to India a lot in the 70s and 80s and for color I usually took Agfachrome for its softer colors and lower contrast. The few rolls of Kodachrome and Ektachrome I shot still look great, but all the Agfachromes have major color shift and are good for nothing but BW conversion. Fortunately, years ago I had many favorites loaded to PhotoCDs (remember that technology?).

Considering how ubiquitous film processing was back then, it's hard to imagine that everyone was rigorous about their processing operations. I often used drug store, supermarket, and department store processing with discount coupons from the newspaper. Old chemistry, large order volumes, and poorly trained staff must have been common. That probably accounts for poor aging more that any inherent qualities of the media.

 

[joe bosak]

colour negative is atrocious

i had seen this in some old negatives i looked at a while ago, was a little surprised given all the hype around the longevity of film...

 

[p.giannakis]

i had seen this in some old negatives i looked at a while ago, was a little surprised given all the hype around the longevity of film...

The posts so far seem to indicate a mixture of reasons for that. My Kodak gold 200 were atrocious but John's experience of the same film is different. Difficult to know what is going on exactly 🤷‍♂️

 

[qqphotos]

I've had the same experience. I found a stash of (presumably) Kodacolor II negatives in 110 instamatic format last year from 1972-1976 along with their prints. They'd been stored indoors in a drawer in the dark for all that time but with no particular care. The prints are faded to the point of being unsalvageable, but when I scanned the negatives I was shocked to discover that most of them are basically perfect and might have been shot yesterday.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Wow. Several years ago, my mom got out a photo album full of photos my parents shot of my sister and I when we were very young in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They'd been shot with a Kodak Instamatic (126 film) camera on color neg film. All the prints were faded so bad that they had lost all color and turned brown. They looked like sepia toned B&W photos, even though they were color!

She asked if I could restore the color. I said no; they were too far gone. I suggested turning them into B&W images, which she wasn't happy about. I then asked if she still had the negatives. Perhaps they had not faded so much; I could scan them and make new prints if they were in good condition. It took her a few days, but she found the negs and I looked at them. They looked good, not faded, with full color. I took them home and scanned the ones she wanted and got great results. The scans did reveal some artifacts, like the yellowish splotches you see in parts of this photo, but it is far better than the brown print was! After that experience, I have always recommended that people with badly faded color prints find the negs; they usually are a lot less faded than prints for some reason (even prints stored in the dark seem to fade worse than the film does).




This was from around 1980, when I was 5 and my sister was 3 years old.

 

[JohnWolf]

Here's one that might make you feel better, Pan. Thirty-some years back on Ektar 25. No sleeves were supplied by the lab, and the negative strips were a solid block that I had to peel apart. On the bright side, no color shift. I wonder if I had let them soak a bit. Maybe a good test project for Photoshop's new AI Remove tool.

 

[JohnWolf]

Actually, there's one Extar filmstrip that was not stuck with the others, because maybe I scanned it decades ago. It looks okay at this resolution, but at 100% you see the craquelure of a 15th century painting. Sad, because it's one of my favorites of them.

 

[Retro-Grouch]

Actually, there's one Extar filmstrip that was not stuck with the others, because maybe I scanned it decades ago. It looks okay at this resolution, but at 100% you see the craquelure of a 15th century painting. Sad, because it's one of my favorites of them.

View attachment 4843897

There is a phenomenon called "acetate film base degradation", more commonly known as "vinegar syndrome". It can attack any acetate-based film over time, leading to effects much like what you have here. Essentially, the acetate breaks down and releases acetic acid, which gives vinegar (and stop bath) their distinctive smell. Did your negs have this smell?
As an aside, this breakdown is not widely known about, but gives the lie to B&W film being inherently "archival". The problem can only be avoided by using polyester-based films. I truly believe that archival permanence is virtually impossible to achieve outside of the sorts of storage conditions not available to the average person. Do the best you can to preserve your images, then cross your fingers and hope for the best.

 

[JohnWolf]

There is a phenomenon called "acetate film base degradation", more commonly known as "vinegar syndrome". It can attack any acetate-based film over time, leading to effects much like what you have here. Essentially, the acetate breaks down and releases acetic acid, which gives vinegar (and stop bath) their distinctive smell. Did your negs have this smell?
As an aside, this breakdown is not widely known about, but gives the lie to B&W film being inherently "archival". The problem can only be avoided by using polyester-based films. I truly believe that archival permanence is virtually impossible to achieve outside of the sorts of storage conditions not available to the average person. Do the best you can to preserve your images, then cross your fingers and hope for the best.

No, no vinegar odor at all, but thanks for the info. And the defect is not among those the web says is associated with acetate film base degradation. More likely it's "crazing" - cracks due to emulsion expanding and contracting in heat and humidity. We lived for years near the ocean in South Florida without AC, so that would make sense.

BTW, thanks for raising this issue, Pan. I've really enjoy looking back at some of my old negatives. Maybe we should post some color positive examples that have fared well.

 

[qqphotos]

Considering the conditions that's really not bad at all as far as degradation goes!

 

[Jonathan R]

i had seen this in some old negatives i looked at a while ago, was a little surprised given all the hype around the longevity of film...

I don't recall anyone suggesting that colour film, and colour negative film especially, had much archival longevity. In the days when library photos were literally sent to magazine editors for possible use, photographers used to anguish constantly over the fading that occurred on the editor's desk. Black-and-white images are in a somewhat better league.