Very old, board based black and white photos
January 20th, 2009
I have been restoring a fair few black and white photos on fibrous cardboard recently. This type of photo seems to have had the light sensitive emulsion painted onto the board and then exposed to light. I would suggest that such large sizes of paper could not be made so the photographer simply grabbed a stable matt cardboard base and painted on the chemicals. The resulting image is a very soft focused photo without any hard defined edges.
With this photo board it has a matt finish and absorbs moisture very well. If you have any very large old photos, perhaps stored in the loft, still in a frame in a plastic bag, please dig them out and put the somewhere dry and warm before they suck up the moisture in the cool damp air, circulating around your loft. As they do this they swell a little and often grow mould of varying types. The fine black soot-like mould and dry white, spidery feather-like mould, possibly mildew. Neither of these do your photos any good, its best to dry them out slowly and then dust them off very lightly with a soft artist’s paint brush. Once the worst is off, use a little photographer’s canned air to blow away the spores, but do this outside otherwise they will just settle in the house and not too close to the photo either.
Once it’s all clean get your photo restoration done. The process of degradation is already happening and there is not a lot you can do to stop it!
Posted in fix my photo, image restoration, old images that need restoring, photo repair, photograph restoration, photographic restoration techniques, restoring old photographs, restoring old photos | 
Tags: board based photos, card board photos, cardboard photos, fiber board photos, fibre board photos, old photos on card, thick card photos
What is the value, if any to the old tecnique of coloring in a black & white photo? . I have several of these my grandfather did in the 1930’s -50’s . 2 have faded and i was going to throw them out. Is this tecnique used today and what was the ink or pencil used?
thanks,katherine
Hi there welcome to the Blog!
It is my belief that the “ink” was either watercolour or coloured inks watered down. I have no scientific basis on which was used but know that the colour had to be very weak so as to still let the grain show through. From my observations I would imagine that it was done with inks. When I did my photography degree (still with paper and chemicals, there were inks available then in various tones for fixing problems and touching up photos. The pencil is just a pencil, possibly of a particular quality suited best for photos, or maybe even a type of charcoal. This would only work on the matt, fibre based papers of the age.
As far as I am aware this pencilling is not used any more as the standard of the lenses and equipment now negates the use of it. Some people still hand colour the photos but with modern papers the result is very very subtle and in my opinion is lost without the real papers of yesteryear and the silver halide chemicals. It was that combination that made the hand coloured photos so magic. Modern equivalents are just not up to the job.
I hope this helps.
Neil
[...] few days ago I was presented with the task of restoring a very badly damaged old board based photo. It had been kept in a garage and had been subjected to moisture and excessive heat. This has [...]
[...] Restoration Man on August 20, 2009 A while ago I was given the task of restoring a badly damaged old board based photo. The photo had been kept in a garage and had been kept in moist air and teh exposed to [...]
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