Film odours, VS etc

[Bren Jacques]

Hi everyone

I've got a number of Pathe films both 9.5 and 17.5mm. A fair number of these films do have some odour but not identical to VS which I have experienced a couple of times when buying 16mm from the US. The films in question are in good condition, a few have slight warping but ONLY where they have been very loosely wound which for film stock approaching 90 years old (I believe) is okay.

I'm just trying to work out why all of these Pathe films seem to have their own unique smell, certainly stronger than modern film stock but not pungent like film suffering from VS and not really 'vinegary' but more like a chemical smell. Some of the film has this greasy type of deposit as on photo attached, I've seen this on modern film I've had processed where I've thought the film hasn't been washed well during processing.

Could it simply be that the odours some of these films have are in fact old processing chemicals that were not completely rinsed from the films when manufactured?

I've thought about cleaning the mentioned films and monitoring going forward, any films with any sort of odour are always stored separate from others in my collection. I'd just like any thoughts on the above and what you'd personally do, whether there's likely to be any risk of film degredation or if it is indeed likely to be from process and possibly lack of cleaning at the time.


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[Alan Paterson]

Hi Bren,
I can't see your image but if the film has some kind of greasy deposit on it then my guess would be that it has been treated with some film cleaning agent in its lifetime.
Cheers
Alan

[Ken Finch]

Hi Bren, Alan has probably given the right reason. It was quite usual to add humidifier to the film cans as well as various proprietary film cleaners. One of the most popular that I used was Thermofilm which was a cleaner/ preservative.

[Juergen Kellermann]

These are quite old films. Would they be on di-acetate film stock, instead of tri-acetate? Di-acetate smells like camphor, as this was used in the production process, and it was produced until about 1950. Is the chemical smell you talk about a bit like camphor? Tri-acetate was developed later and slowly superseded di-acetate film base; it usually does not smell too much - unless it develops vinegar syndrome.

[Ken Finch]

Yes, they would be Di acetate for any prints made before 1950. Also, the humidifier used tended to smell of camphor. Many film cans had a blotting paper pad to contain the little drops of the humidifier solution which one applied using a small glass “dropper”.

[Bren Jacques]

Thanks for all of the thoughts and replies on this. After some consideration into the above I'm leaning more to the likelihood that it's either poorly washed film when processed or old film cleaner/preservative. It was quite hard to describe the smell initially but knowing I've smelled similar before. It doesn't smell of Camphor but instead does smell much more of old/stale chemicals. Some years ago I bought some old photo processing equipment along with chemicals that were nearing 50 years old and the smell was very similar if not identical.

I think the plan with these films will be to give them a good clean and see how they go. I'm fairly certain that it isn't degredation of the base and it'll be interesting to see if the odour stays away once they've been cleaned.