Will negatives/slides turn mouldy?

[diana]

Hi all!! I'm new to this site... So hope you can help me with my questions! Thank you!!

I would like to know how all of you store your slides and negatives.... Well, judging from the many posts I read, I'm sure some of you shoot really a lot with films. But where do you store the negatives and slides? I believe with the humidity in singapore, like our camera equipment, these negatives and slides will turn mouldy 1 day right?

I'm itching to give up fim SLR for good and maybe turn to digital completely. I'm having a very big headache with the negatives and my countless prints!! Sometimes it gets so bad I wish I could dump them all in to the store room.... getting very messy in my room already.

Thanks again... just want some feedback...

 

[ziploc]

For slides I would normally mount the keepers and keep them in the dry cabinet. For negatives they just got dumped in my room, although I would like to keep some of them in the dry cabinet...

Oh and about digital pictures, they are not hassle free too. You need to archive them regularly onto CD-R/RW, and keep track of which you have archived and which you have not...

 

[diana]

Thanks ziploc. What about those other slides that you don't mount? Do you still keep them or discard them? So far are your negatives in good condition?

 

[ziploc]

The slides that I don't mount are normally "rejects", so I just put them all into a big plastic bag and leave outside the dry cabinet. As for the condition of the negatives... don't know, but I think won't be too good.

 

[kahheng]

Originally posted by diana
Hi all!! I'm new to this site... So hope you can help me with my questions! Thank you!!

I would like to know how all of you store your slides and negatives.... Well, judging from the many posts I read, I'm sure some of you shoot really a lot with films. But where do you store the negatives and slides? I believe with the humidity in singapore, like our camera equipment, these negatives and slides will turn mouldy 1 day right?

I'm itching to give up fim SLR for good and maybe turn to digital completely. I'm having a very big headache with the negatives and my countless prints!! Sometimes it gets so bad I wish I could dump them all in to the store room.... getting very messy in my room already.

Thanks again... just want some feedback...

Actually, humidity is one thing, but storage temperature, if you're really keen to archive your colour materials, is equally critical. (Basically, use a fridge and find some way to water/moisture-tight the materials you're archiving at the same time.)

Take a look at the Wilhelm Research website:

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/

His book on the topic ("The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs") is a must read if you're serious about this.

There's a very good PDF document called "Going! Going!! Gone!!! - Will Your Pictures Fade???-How Long Will It Take-What Films and Papers Are Best" by Bob Schwalberg with Henry Wilhelm and Carol Brower that you can download for free here

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/pp_dis_img.pdf

whilst this article is very old by now (13 years), the last part regarding ideal storage conditions for film and prints is very much still applicable today

There's really no other tester like H. Wilhelm on the subject of photographic material permanence (Kodak use to hate him because he showed that they were turning out products that didn't quite live up to the 'everlasting' memories jingo they were touting at one time - probably also for pointing out that Fuji materials were generally way ahead in the long term durability stakes esp. with E-6 and RA materials), though he's at least boo-booed once regarding one of Epson's inkset and paper.

Good luck.................

 

[sriram]

It's going to be expensive if you want a temperature and humidity controlled environment for slides / negs. As with the other posters, I separate the good ones from the rejects. The keepers are stored in the dehumidifier at room temperature, and the rejects go down the chute. It's very important NOT to get any moisture on the slides when they are in the fridge... and that's quite a difficult task.

You're not much safer with digital. My office-mate had a corrupted hard disk and his images were lost. When he tried to recover them from his old CD backups, many of the CDs were unreadable, and some of them had fungus. (Yes, CD's are attacked by fungus in Singapore too). At least, with slides and negs, some amount of restoration can be done.