Fading Negatives- Which Ones Keep Dyes the Best?

[25asa]

<p>I scanned a bunch of older color negatives some years ago on a Noritsu film scanner. Color correction was done, but some negatives didn't fare so well. What I noticed were the ones that faded the quickest (in terms of dyes) were Konica. Not far from Konica I found negatives from Fuji from the 80s and 90s fading quite a bit. The negatives that faded the least were Kodak. Matter of fact- I used Kodak Gold 100 for the majority of my rolls and these negatives held up very well from the 80s and 90s. Hardly any fading at all. I would expected better from Fuji to be honest. What have you guys noticed?</p>

[c_watson1]

<p>My Fuji negs from the late 80s on look just fine. Any variation among them seems less the result of deterioration than occasional bum processing.</p>

<p>Besides, you'd need a far bigger sample to make any sort of serious argument for/against Fuji/Kodak, right?</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>Kodak film with Kodak processing, in my experience, is better than most other reversal or color negative films, but Ektachrome is less resistant to fading than Kodachrome. C/N films in general are not really all that great for archival persistence. </p>

<p>I never used Konica films, so no personal information there; but, in terms of long-term dark storage, I reported on some curiousities of slide preservation and restoration at http://www.photo.net/film-and-processing-forum/00a5Jt </p>

<p>For much, much more information go to http://www.wilhelm-research.com/ where you can download literally volumes of information on this subject.</p>

[randrew1]

<p>I've misplaced my copy of Wilhelm's report on color film stability so this is from memory.</p>

<p>Kodak color negs are rated at something like 25-50 years for a 10% loss in the least stable dye. While Fuji paper has excellent stability, their color negs are less stable that Kodak's. Older generations of color negs were not as good. I've scanned some 50 year old Kodacolor where about half the yellow dye was gone.</p>

<p>Kodachrome has long been considered the champ in image stability. It is rated at 185 years. Modern Ektachrome films (since 1990) are actually better with a rating of 220 years. The first generation of E-6 Ektachrome was around 50 years. E-4 lasted about half that long. E-3 had rather poor stability.</p>

<p>It is possible to recover faded images after scanning. Color balance adjustments aren't enough. Badly faded film requires individual contrast adjustments for the red, green, and blue channels. </p>

[bill_streeter]

<p>An additional factor which has caused me a lot of problems was the introduction in 1985 of Kodak minilab systems which allowed photofinishers and any photo shop to offer one hour processing. Despite Kodak's excellent reputation for reliability, they apparently depended too much on their accellerated aging tests which can never be certain to predict natural aging. My color negatives and prints from the introduction of one-hour processing exhibit great variations in image deterioration/fading leading me to conclude that there was variation in effectiveness of the processing (i.e. poor process control at the photofinisher) as well as an overall tendency for more fading. This has led me to concenrtrate on scanning my negatives from the 1980's with greater priority than from prior years.<br>

And this is aggrevated by the difficulty in scanning the tiny images from the Kodak disc system.</p>