a question about fading

Filip Plesha · February 9, 2004

There is something i don't understand,if you have a negative

with all coupler layers fading,you usually get more transperent blacks

and a washed out picture with less contrast..

But with the negative,the colors are reversed,so the strongest density

in the negative gives white when printed.So if the dyes fade,you would

loose the strenght of this dense black and that would mean that

when printed,the whites would not be so much white,and darks would get

even darker.

So how come faded films do not get darker,but get lighter and loose black?

I would understand if you are dealing with faded interpositive or print material,

but i am talking about the negative.

Can someone shed some light on this?

Mitch Gross · February 9, 2004

The negatives get thinner, meaning there is less useable material on them. When a print is made from them it has less contrast and therefore the blacks become milkier. Or put it this was, they are in effect getting darker, but so that you can see it they are printed brighter so the blacks become grey.

Filip Plesha · February 9, 2004

I still don't get it,you say that the negative emulsion is getting thinner

and there is less usable material on them,that would mean

that more light comes throught the negative,making the print look

darker..

here is an example of what i mean...

you have a black surface photographed...on the negative

it gets little density and becomes near white...

and when the negative fades,the density is even less so this little

color grains that were in the white area is lost and the white

becomes even whiter,and if you print it it gets darker.

So then the dark would have to get even darker and you would

be able to get more density in the print.

Where am i wrong in my logic?

Mitch Gross · February 10, 2004

The only point where you are wrong is that the timer would then see that the image was now darker so he would change the printer lights to brighten the image. Having now brightened the image everything will get brighter, including the shadow areas. So the blacks will go grey.

Filip Plesha · February 10, 2004

aha...

ok...so basicly i was right,without timing,actually everything fades to black

and when timed it results in low contrast but bright image because the dynamic range is reduced with fading.

Ok thank you,i get i now.

David Mullen ASC · February 10, 2004

This may be confusing, but the DENSER the negative is, the more light that needs to be pumped through it for printing it back "down" to normal, the BLACKER the blacks are.

A "thin" (less dense) negative requires less light to print through it and you end up with milkier blacks.

Think of it like "crushing the blacks" -- you take a dense (overexposed) image and print it down to normal brightness, the blacks go down as well, getting darker. You take a thin (underexposed) image and print it up to normal brightness, now the blacks are lifted as well and get milkier. So if a negative gets less dense with time, that's fine if you let it be darker on the print -- but usually you want to print it back up to normal brightness, which is why the blacks are not strong. Some films may also be suffering from chemical fogging from improper development.

Color layers do not fade evenly - usually the yellow dyes fade first in color negative. In print stock, it's the cyan dye that fades first.