Important information regarding processing
old or obsolete color films

What follows is presented to help you decide whether or not to try rescuing your old color films (for information on Kodachrome films, click here). 

First: A little bit of technical background.

• When film is exposed, the silver halide crystals in its emulsion are converted by light into specks of metallic silver. The silver forms a latent image.
• Color development involves reacting the silver latent image with colorless dye-precursor chemicals to turn them into colored dyes, and then bleaching away the silver. In this way, the original monochrome silver image is replaced by a colored image made of dyes. 
• These dye precursor chemicals are part of the film's emulsion.

Second: How this causes problems.

• When color films remain unprocessed for many years, the latent image becomes fogged by warmth and background radiation, and the delicate dye precursors lose their ability to react. This results in images that are too faint to print, or completely blank. 
• This is a physical property of the film, and even the most sophisticated chemical formulations and processing technique cannot compensate.
• What this means is, even the most expert chemist is unlikely to be able to salvage useable color images from very old color films, unless the films have been stored cold.

Third: Our solution to the problem.

• Since the original silver latent image is more stable than the dye precursors, it is very likely that useable images can be salvaged from many odd or obsolete color films. If it is possible to keep the silver image, rather than bleach it away, a black and white image can be recovered even if the colors have been destroyed by time.
• We employ a special process for developing very old or obsolete color films without destroying the original silver image. We are then able to evaluate the film and, if the colored dyes are acceptable, we remove the silver and print in color. Otherwise, we print in black and white.
• When this process is coupled with advanced scanning technologies, deteriorated films often yield quite good images, even though the negatives often appear unprintable to the naked eye. 

For this reason, our policy is to develop all obsolete color films using this process, and to print them as black and white if the colors cannot be salvaged.

No results can be guaranteed. However, if images cannot be recovered, we refund your payment.

We encourage you to send your old films. At best, we will be successful in recovering images. At worst, it will cost you no more than your postage.

Click here for details.