Salvaging flooded neg strips

[Ivan]

Thanks to a basement flood, many of my negatives are stuck to the
transparent negative-holding pages I kept them in. How can i
extricate, clean, and scan them with minimum harm to the image?

 

[Barry Watzman]

I would try soaking the whole thing in distilled water and see if being
wet will release the film from the pages. Do this on a test strip that
does not contain important images.

 

[CSM1]

Thanks to a basement flood, many of my negatives are stuck to the
transparent negative-holding pages I kept them in. How can i
extricate, clean, and scan them with minimum harm to the image?

I would try soaking the whole page in clean cool tap water. Then while wet,
separate the negatives from the negative pages.

After you get the negatives separated, hang them up on a line with wooden
clothes pins to dry. Put one pin on the line to hold the film and another
clothes pin on the bottom of the film for weight.


For the mold:
There is a commercial film cleaner called PEC-12. Label says it works on
Fungal Growth.
http://photosol.com/pec12.htm

Amazon has some in 4 oz spray bottle.
http://www.amazon.com/Photographic-Solutions-PEC-12-Emulsion-Cleaner/dp/B00009R72R/ref=pd_cp_p_0

Or in a 32 oz quality.
http://www.amazon.com/Photographic-Solutions-PEC-12-Emulsion-Cleaner/dp/B0002HTIP4

You can search Google for PEC-12 and find many places to buy.

 

[Brendan R. Wehrung]

Depends on the age of the negatives - gelatin becomes water soluble as it
ages (should be OK if negs are under 15-20 years old) so if negatives are
fairly old water could wash the images off so as you say do a test strip
first, preferably an unimportant one of the oldest strips you have.

If very important images and pages are transparent may be worth cutting
pages down to width of the film and scanning them with these strips of
plastic still attached - better to have fuzzy images to clean up than
nothing left.

If they still make it IO(kodak is dumping everything these dayos), I'd add
a couple of drops of Phtoflow (a wetting agent) to the water. If nothing
else it will assume that you don't get water rings (dried minerals) when
you hand the negatives up to dry, but it may aid in detatching the storage
sheet from the emulsion.

Brendan