{"id":1126,"date":"2012-02-13T01:26:51","date_gmt":"2012-02-13T07:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/?p=1126"},"modified":"2012-02-13T11:13:02","modified_gmt":"2012-02-13T17:13:02","slug":"the-copyist-resurrecting-old-negatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/?p=1126","title":{"rendered":"The Copyist: Resurrecting Old Negatives"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Copyist was taken in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, in 1991. I prefer using available light which in this case was a mix of fluorescent and heavily overcast daylight. The painter is reproducing Women Ironing<\/em> by Degas.<\/p>\n

At the time I took this picture, I was under the mistaken impression that the painters working in the Orsay were students learning the style of the Impressionists. It was only much later that I discovered that copyists have a long honored tradition. (1)<\/p>\n

When I located the negative for this image I discovered that, despite my best efforts at protective storage, the film was covered with a mildew of some type. Here is an image made from the damaged negative.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

My first attempt at restoration was to gently wipe the film strip with an Ilford Anti-Static Cloth<\/em>. This had no effect. The dirt\/mildew was in the form of a hard crust that appeared to be imbedded in the emulsion.<\/p>\n

I realized that I needed to clean the film using Edwal Anti Stat Film Cleaner<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. I began by dipping the film strip in water at room temperature.
    \nThis softened the emulsion.<\/li>\n
  2. Next, I slipped the film strip, emulsion side up, into a shallow bath of the Edwal.
    \nI gently rocked the bath of cleaner back and forth so that it washed over the emulsion.<\/li>\n
  3. I pulled the film from the cleaner and shook it to remove most of the fluid.<\/li>\n
  4. Last, gently wiped the film strip dry with a soft lint free cloth: a scrap from an old t-shirt.<\/li>\n
  5. I laid the film strip emulsion side up on a clean sheet of paper and let it air dry for a few minutes.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    When the film was dry I scanned it using a Nikon Super Cool Scan 5000 ED<\/em> and saved the image as a TIF file. I turned off the ICE spot removal software because it tends to soften the image, i.e. less sharpness.<\/p>\n

    The resulting image file was significantly cleaner. However, I would still need several hours of spot and scratch removal before the image was ready for the rest of the editing that I wanted to do.<\/p>\n

    The result was satisfactory for today but I need to find a better way to clean negatives, in particular, how I can avoid scratching the emulsion. Perhaps using a soft fine hair brush to remove the dirt while the film is in the cleaner would do the trick, rather than wiping with the soft cloth.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0(1) Never say `fake’. Forget `forgery’. It’s got to be `copy’ or `pastiche’<\/em>; Iain Gale;
    \n    The Independent<\/a>; 09\/05\/1995<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The Copyist was taken in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, in 1991. I prefer using available light which in this case was a mix of fluorescent and heavily overcast daylight. The painter is reproducing Women Ironing by Degas. At the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,4,7,28,35,3],"tags":[579,330,495,525,328,329,501],"class_list":["post-1126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-blog","category-color","category-france","category-paris","category-photo","tag-579","tag-copyist","tag-france","tag-les-phillips","tag-musse-dorsay","tag-painter","tag-paris"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1Imyw-ia","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1134,"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions\/1134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.les-phillips.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}