Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/04/01
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]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