Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/09/05

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Subject: Re: [Leica] b&w, color of the soul (was: Old colour film stock and back to pictures.)
From: Donal Philby <donalphilby@earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 05 Sep 1998 10:54:18 +0000

D Khong wrote:

> I shoot in both B&W and colour.  Over the years, I have found to my
> disappointment that my colour photographs are fading.  So I thought it was
> simply a matter of getting the lab to reprint more pics from my well kept
> colour negatives.  Lo and behold, the reprints showed considerable colour
> shift and the appeareance is far from the original.  A yellow cast is
> obvious in almost all my reprints.  These are from negs just 4 years old!!

Dan,
This is something we have discussed on these electrons in the past.  The
issue was the potential loss of most photojournalism since newspapers
switched from BW to color neg.  We may have a vast majority of
photographically recorded history over the last 15 years that will soon
be gone.  In the deadline atmosphere little thought is given to archival
practices.  Even with prints.  Only digitizing has some hope of
surviving, unless selected images are some how preserved.

I understand that Ernst Haas, mindful of history and despite shooting
mostly Kodachrome, had selected images separated and transfered to
monochrome film.

While the early E6 films seem to be fading, more recent E6 films are
claimed to have at least a 50 years life in archival conditions.  But
who on this entire list stores their film and prints in archival
conditions?

donal

- -- 
Donal Philby
San Diego
http://www.donalphilby.com