How to clean the family negs?

[Ronald_H]

A friend has inherited the old family archive. A box full of negatives dating from the 1940's until now. There are many formats in there, 120, 35mm, 828, shot will all kinds of cams.

We would like to scan these negs (I have a Coolscan V and a v500) but obviously some of them are (very) dirty.

Is it safe to clean these negs by soaking them in water + a tiny bit of washing up liquid (what I use for my final rinse)? Or is there a real danger of the emulsion separating? For 'dry' cleaning I have Pec Pads.

Ideas would be appreciated.

 

[Ranchu]

I tried pec pads on slides once with their cleaning solution, scratched more than cleaned, even though I used a blower. I have not done the rewashing with photoflo method but have heard it recommended. That's the route I intend to take in the future. Hopefully sombody who has more experience will post too.

 

[jtzordon]

I've heard a washing soda soak works, but have yet to attempt it!

 

[KenR]

I just went through a similar process with old slides from 1986 that had been stuck in the bottom of a drawer with 20+ years of dust and grunge on them. Canned air didn't work and the emulsion cleaner seemed to scratch the slide I tried it on. So - I took the slides out of their mounts and washed them in cool water and then in Photoflo and hung them to dry. They look perfect and scanned without any artifact.

 

[Dwig]

...
Is it safe to clean these negs by soaking them in water + a tiny bit of washing up liquid (what I use for my final rinse)? Or is there a real danger of the emulsion separating? ...

Safe? Certainly not. You will probably be successful, but there is a small but non-zero chance of emulsion separation or other problems.

These negatives are upwards onto 70 years old. The acetate base could easily have begun to decompose. Even when newly processed, film from the '40s and '50s was not as rugged as film made since the late '60s. I would highly recommend that you make the best scans possible from the uncleaned negatives before attempting any cleaning, and then doing the least invasive cleaning necessary.

 

[charjohncarter]

I had this dilemma recently. And I am sure with much older negatives. First did them though my copying process, and then I tried to clean some of the dirty ones (just water and soap). I came to the conclusion that many hours in PSE6 was the best solution. Here are some of them from 1939 and none of these were cleaned, just worked over with the miracle of PSE6:

The above were all taken by my father. Then these were taken by my father-in-law: 1937 to 1947 (slides):

and this a Kodachrome from 1937:

It is a lot of work but you can do it. The Chromes are for me especially hard to clean. B&W you can wash the grunge off but then you have to deal with spots and scratches.

 

[ZorkiKat]

The colour photos look as if they were shot yesterday, of people in period costumes. Restoration has done wonders.

Your negatives/slides appear to have kept well through the years. The climate has a lot to do with these. Here in the tropics, the life expectancy or at least keeping qualities of such is much shorter.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Digital ICE and automatic colour restoration (the old Applied Science Fiction stuff, now owned by Kodak, I think) have worked wonders with most of our old slides, going back to the 30s. We just brush 'em off and let the scanner take care of any dirt and scratches that remain.

We just wet-print the negs.

Cheers,

R.