Cleaning Film

[Henderson]

I have some old footage about 25 years old. There is what looks like snow flakes on the film (but dark). Perhaps bacteria? Is it possible to clean this off? Please let me know.
Henderson

[mr.skull]

I have a several films from the eighties that have been ruined by this. It looks like darkish crystal-snowflakes. It only seems to happen to Ektachrome 160 films. I doubt it is bacteria. My theory is it is the result of bad processing from the lab. Some people like to think "film is forever". Unless it is Kodachrome, it definitley is not! Anyone else experience this problem?

[bamboo]

I have about ten reels of Kodak film from ca. 1977-1979 that are infested with highly branched fungal colonies, from small to large, that sound somewhat similar to this. The small ones look like snowflakes. It's not just because they were stored in Miami for awhile, since many more reels were there and unaffected. Was it the processing, or the film? Have always wondered.

[Roget]

It's probably fungus. I read an article some time ago talking about this. Film has geletin in it, which serves as food. I've never seen in any of our home movies, which date back to 1962, but it has shown up in Kodachrome slides my mother photographed back in the '50s.

Both movies and slides spent too many years stored in the basement, with entirely too much humidity. However, the movies were stored in metal cans; the slides in trays in a "leatherette" case. The case might have had something to do with it.

Unfortunately, you can't clean it, and can't stop it. At some point, I hope to use a film scanner to preserve the images on the slides, and maybe take a stab at eliminating the defects in Photoshop, but that's out of financial reach right now.