Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/04/01

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Subject: Re: [Leica] Kodak Safety film not so safe.....
From: "Mike Durling" <durling@widomaker.com>
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 19:57:55 -0500

There was an early safety base called cellulose diacetate.  I have come
across some of this and it is fairly unstable but won't burn like nitrate.
It has a strong ascetic acid smell when you get a bunch of it in the same
place.

The stuff they use now is triacetate.  Even that will shrink especially if
not stored under ideal conditions.  Where I work we have a movie where the
producers had silver separations made from the original color negative.  The
separations shrunk unevenly making registration impossible.

Kodak made a good book called "The Book of Film Care" which explains a lot
about the care and preservation of film stocks.  Its now available on the
web at http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/support/technical/care.shtml  Good
reading!

Mike Durling
KD4KWB
http://www.widomaker.com/~durling/

- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Harrison Mcclary" <harrison@mcclary.net>
To: "LUG" <leica-users@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>
Sent: Saturday, April 01, 2000 5:04 PM
Subject: [Leica] Kodak Safety film not so safe.....


> This past week I was visiting a friend and fellow photographer at his
studio
> in Murfreesboro, TN a town not far from where I live.  While there we
began
> discussing how a lot of his dad's old negs are rapidly deteriorating.
>
> Let me insert here that his dad, Dick Shacklett, was a photographer in the
> classic old style.  Shot with the big old cameras used Graflexes, Speed
> Graphics, he created much of the visual history of Rutherford County
> Tennessee with his photos. Some of you may have seem his most famous photo
> "strike" a shot of a rainbow trout as it takes the fly...an incredible
photo
> considering it was made in the days of sheet film.
>
> Anyway almost all of his old photos shot on "Kodak Safety Film" are
rapidly
> destroying themselves.  It seems that the acetate used in the base on
these
> films is chemically unstable and is beginning to shrink.  This is making
the
> negs extremely crinkled and such.  The official term is furrowing (sp?).
>
> This is not due to poor storage or handling, but with the stability of the
> acetate itself.  They are trying to learn how to stop this and have heard
of
> one or two methods, but one is about $100 per neg.....kinda high when you
> consider the thousands and thousands of negs from that generation.
>
> Hope the film makers have this problem fixed for current
emulsions.....guess
> the best thing is to either shoot on Glass Plates or make archival prints
of
> everything.
>
>
> --
> Harrison McClary
> http://www.mcclary.net
>
>