1993 Ilford HP5 220 film

Thought some of you who used outdated film might be interested in this. A few years ago a friend gave me about a hunded rolls of Ilford HP5 film in 220 size, in five pack pro boxes. The expiration date on the boxes is 1993 but I know for a fact that my friend had stored the film frozen since he bought it sometime in the mid-1990s.

I shot 10 rolls of this film on a recent trip to Mexico and have just finished developing it. I rated the film at an EI of 200. Because of the anticipated high B+F I decided to develop the film in divided D23 for 4+4 minutes rather than in Pyrocat since the stain would have increased B+F.

The resulting negatives are quite nice. There was apparently no loss of film speed and the B+F is log 0.40, not low by any means but quite easy to print through or scan.

Too bad this film is no longer available in 220. One sure goes through the 120 pretty fast when shooting 6X7cm or 6X9cm.

Sandy King

Sandy,

I'm currently going through a box of 5x7 HP5 that expired in 1996, and it has just a teeny weeny amount of base fog above normal. It's working very well indeed, and I can't see much difference in image quality compared to fresh film.
I develop with continuous rotary agitation, using HC-110 developer, 500ml / 2 sheets @ 1+100 dilution, for 9 minutes.

I have a box of FP4 from the same period, and it works like a charm too. I also have about 60 rolls left of Plus-X 120 that expired in 1996. Those look fantastic in both HC-110 and Rodinal. For some reason or another I can't get it to work with Pyrocat or Edwal 12, but that's a different story.
The best story of them all is a box of Kodak Tri-X 400 4x5 sheets that expired in 1983. Believe it or not - those turned out really nice in Pyrocat.

Then, of course, I've had a few duds too. And I think some of it were the same brands as above. Storage conditions seem to be the common denominator.

Stored well, I think b&w film can definitely keep for a long time.

..