Scanner, operator error or humidity damage?

I've just got around to scanning my negatives after many years (I bought the film scanner years ago: Plustek OpticFilm 7600) and I'm using Silverfast 8 to import. All of my images are coming out with various blotching, what do you think it is?

If it's neg damage, will cleaning the negs resolve this? Or is it a scanner issue? Or is it me being a n00b and too lazy with exploring the software settings? This somehow feels organic...

The orange contrast-mask may make it difficult to see this blue-yellow patchiness. If you have a blue filter of any sort, then viewing the negative through that may show any blotchiness on the negative slightly easier.

My gut feeling is that the blotches are on the negatives, and due to poor storage. How old are those negatives? And how have they been stored?

The orange contrast-mask may make it difficult to see this blue-yellow patchiness. If you have a blue filter of any sort, then viewing the negative through that may show any blotchiness on the negative slightly easier.

 

My gut feeling is that the blotches are on the negatives, and due to poor storage. How old are those negatives? And how have they been stored?

Thanks for your reply. It's really hard to see on the negs (I don't have a blue filter) they've been stored in individual sleeves in a folder. However I lived in a really humid area - and they are about 20 years old.

There is a pretty helpful camera shop, so maybe I should take the negs in... if it is neg damage, is it worth giving them a clean or is the damage done?

If you look closely at the negatives, can you see the blotches?

It's super hard to tell, I'll have to take the negs into a camera shop

Get a commercial scan done. Or just one or two prints made. If the yellow blotches are still there, then it's the negatives.

The patches look as if they could have been caused by contact with a non-archival-quality plastic sleeve. In which case I think there's no way to remove the staining or fading.

Cleaning is likely to do more harm than good. A gentle wipe with a soft cotton cloth or lens tissue shouldn't hurt, but I don't recommend any wet or solvent cleaning.

Patterns like that could happen from the scanner, but would happen on all scans.

Dirt or something else stuck to the scanner glass, for example.

But that should be easy to see on the glass.

A few prints or professional scans will answer the question.

The blotches the same from image to image? Do you have any newer negatives that you could scan? While you have negatives that have sat around for some time, the scanner has also sat from what you said. Make sure that the glass bed on the scanner is clean that the negatives are flat when scanned.