I would like to know...

1. What do you do when you encounter a fingerprint on an oily surfaces, such as fingerprint on a gas tank or in the kitchen, how do you collect it?

2. Is it only by photography?
(because sometimes photography alone is not good enough)

3. Is there any other way? Like cyanoacrylate fuming?

4. Can freezing the surfaces help?

I'd really like to know because sometimes we find an empty gas tank in a fire scene with fingerprint on it. The tank is very oily, we cannot develop a good fingerprint and the photograph, sometimes, doesn't work.

Thank you

I'm no expert-however have you tried to "smoke it" use the yellow sooty flame from a candle or similar-I would imagine that this may develop it-removal (lifting the print) may turn out to be difficult though.

Try it and please get back to me I'm intrigued.

I used to work with cryogenics i.e. cold stuff-another idea might be to use freeze spray (its cfc but it may work) spray the test prints-they may freeze with some frostiness allowing a picture to be taken.

Using the sooot from a candle and the freeze spray might give you a black print and a white print on these surfaces depending on your needs.