Look at how this film cleaner evaporates out of the bottle.

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Evaporation of Filmrenew film cleaner in a capped bottle.

I haven't been doing much film cleaning over the past few years. I need a decent cine' film scanner. But I did lots of film cleaning when I was learning the ropes about cine' film scanning in the early days of the film archive. I'll give you some info on film cleaning at the end.

I had this bottle of Filmrenew sitting around for years. I swore it kept shrinking even with no use. So, I marked it on 3.24.2025. I came across it yesterday while doing some organizing. I was shocked to see how much cleaner had evaporated and I marked it for the second time. I've got a gallon of this stuff somewhere. Who knows how much of it is left. I'm glad I don't sleep with it in my bedroom, breathing all those chemicals. I can now see why they used glass for storing certain chemicals.

When it comes to cleaning cine' film you have 2 directions to go; fast or slow evaporating film cleaner. Edwal makes a fast evaporating film cleaner. It is OK for a fast job where you don't have heavy duty dirt. But if you had dirty film and used Edwal, it would leave lots of dirt on the film. 

 

The dirt needs time to loosen and you need something that will not evaporate so fast. Filmrenew or Vitafilm are both slow evaporating film cleaners and film lubricators. So they do deep cleaning of film. But they are a pain to wipe off compared to the fast evaporating cleaners that dry up almost instantly. 

 

You can test this all yourself. You clean dirty film normally as you would with Edwal, then reclean with Filmrenew and see all the dirt that was left behind. Being a broke archivist, I just switched over to using 99% isopropyl alcohol for film cleaning. It is a fraction of the price of Filmrenew or Vitafilm and does adequate cleaning. I also don't get doped up from breathing the chemicals from the slow evaporating cleaners. I got enough chemicals for free from working in the wet darkroom for 35 years. But if you got some filthy, dirty film; nothing beats Filmrenew or Vitafilm for cleaning.  

 

The downfall of 99% alcohol is it is a fast evaporating film cleaner and can leave dirt behind. It also does not lubricate the film. And no matter what you use here in this discussion, nothing cures vinegar syndrome. It may halt or slow it down where it is at, but it does not reverse anything.

 

See:

 

 

 

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Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography

 

Edited June 17 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.