Response to Cleaning vintage negatives

Bill, I'd go for stabilising the negs to prevent further deterioration rather than attempting to clean them. I have some negs belonging to my grandparents, oddly enough shot in China as well, and they're unevenly processed with some fixer staining evident, grubby and brittle [rather as one would expect after surviving a world war and a communist revolution.] I have re-filed them in archival-quality sleeves [Printfile aor any other archival brand] and stored them in a dust-free dark place with silica gel to absorb excess humidity. You've scanned the negs, so retouching the images digitally will give you the best results. You can always make copy negs from the retouched files using a film recorder if you want conventional B/W prints. Conservators spend a lot of time undoing other people's attempts to fix things up, so I 'd suggest intervening as little as possible.

[ Previous | Next ]