As shown in another thread I am currently experimenting with a 16mm negative from 1974.
The can was quite rusty and hard to open but I managed it eventually and the first few pieces of the film I shot and developed looked and smelled fine and were not strange in any way.
On later pieces I saw after developing and scanning that the film was yellow on the areas of the edges, I thought it might have been some sort of fogging...
Then last week, when I cut off a piece in the darkroom, the negative was sticking together on its original roll, making a sound like removing sticky tap from plastic, but once taken from there it would not stick anymore. Besides that all still looked and smelled normal.
Now the recent piece I cut off yesterday also had a slight vinegar smell, this is the first time I noticed it on this film, I wonder why the smell was not there a week earlier. I keep the film dry, cool and in the dark.
Could it be that the negative only sticks together on the edges and the yellow I saw in the scans was fogging that happened when I peeled the negative from the reel and it was fogged by static discharge or such? I could at least not see any sudden light flashes in the darkroom whilst doing this.
If the negative shows first symptoms of vinegar syndrom, will this also "infect" other films that I run through the same camera at a later point in time, or is it only dangerous to have other films close to the infected one?