Fungus on negatives

[Sean Moran]

Hello folks,

I just thought I'd share a solution to a recent problem of mine, which maybe afflicts some of you also.

After storing my negative files in a damp cottage in County Leitrim, Ireland, while moving house from Belfast to Tipperary (it's a long way...) to my horror, I found fungal growths on most of them. Some of these negs go back to the 70's, so I was understandably distraught. The chromogenic films were beyond treatment, but, thank God, I found a cure for the conventional B&W (mainly Ilford Hp5 and Hp5+).

Here is my method.

1. Find a strip of negs containing a keeper.
2. Blast it with compressed air
3. Examine it though a loupe (a Jupiter 50mm f/2 in my case)
4. Place it on a sheet of A4 paper and wipe the non-emulsion side with a microfibre lens cloth dampened with isopropanol (isopropyl alcohol)
5. Leave it to dry for a few seconds
6. Re-examine it with a loupe
7. Transfer the neg to a new, clean, dry neg file
8. Put it somewhere darkish and dry
9. Rejoice in saving an apparently-lost image from the past, so that a brand-new print can be made from it.

Small bottles of isopropanol are easily-available in pharmacies here in Ireland, so perhaps they can also be found where you live.

Hope this helps,

Good luck,

Sean.

PS I don't think that this works on corrupted memory-cards 🙂
PPS Read the warnings on the bottle
PPS No liability is accepted by me for any injury to yourself or your negs by using this method. It worked for me.

 

[troym]

Does the fungal growth affect only the non-emulsion side of the negatives?

 

[payasam]

I have some negatives on which the emulsion has been eaten away in places. Hopeless.

 

[Sean Moran]

I have some negatives on which the emulsion has been eaten away in places. Hopeless.

Perhaps I've been lucky, but the fungus is only on the non-emulsion side. It consists of fine whitish, powdery threads, which have not etched the neg but just sit on top of it.

Sean

 

[Sparrow]

I have some negatives on which the emulsion has been eaten away in places. Hopeless.

I have a few thousand like that after they were stored in the garage, for only a few months, after moving house, I only saved about a quarter; with a UV lamp and a rinse in detergent.
Sean: Glad you caught yours in time

 

[oftheherd]

Considering fungi spread from spores, I hope you were outside and a long ways down wind from anything else you consider important before you used the compressed air. I would watch that "loupe" carefully too.

 

[Sean Moran]

Oops!

I did it in the house!

The loupe is an old Russian Jupiter 50mm f/2 lens, so I'll take a look at it tonight. I understood that the spores are just about everywhere anyway, and that it is avoiding the conditions which enable them to thrive which is the crucial thing, not having a spore-free environment. However, I've heard of one lens-maker (Zeiss?) who will not repair fungus-attacked lenses for fear of the spores spreading in the workshop.

Any thoughts on this.


Seán.