Rescuing Damaged Film
During early stages of decay, the film content can be rescued by transferring it to new film stock. Once the film becomes brittle it cannot be copied in its entirety. Because the gelatin emulsion usually stays intact during the degradation process, it is possible to save the image on sheet film using solvents to dissolve the base off the emulsion. Once the emulsion has been freed from the shrunken support, it can be photographed or transferred to a new support. Because of the solvents used, this is a delicate and potentially hazardous procedure and is an expensive process for a large collection. Degraded motion picture film cannot be restored in this way, but sheet films often can.
While digitization would be an ideal way to preserve the contents of cellulose acetate film, current standards do not allow for scanning at sufficient resolutions to produce a copy of the same picture and sound quality as the original. Currently, the National Film Preservation Institute advocates film-to-film transfer as the best method for film preservation, with the copies stored in proper environmental conditions.
Read more about this topic: Cellulose Acetate Film
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