Advice for shooting and processing old film.

I have several boxes of 8x10 tri-x and plus-x 50 sheet sealed boxes expiration dates from 1981 to 1988. This film would still be in the sealed foil pouches inside. I would like to use it, if possible. The film has been stored since new at comfortable room temperature in a cabinet in my studio.

I am guessing I will get some age fog..maybe a lot. I would welcome any suggestions to help maximize my success in using this film.

I will be developing in a tray, have done this many times before. My developer of choice, if no one says different, will be D-76 straight up. I have this already mixed up. Any suggestions welcome, or additives that might help reduce potential age fog. I have a fairly elaborate inventory of component chemicals, so I can mix up custom developers, or add things to commercial developers.

read up on Benzotriazole as a fog restrainer

BTZ, as I refere to it in short is an organic anti foggant that I have used with some reasoanable success on some GAF (rebadged ferrania) slow speed old emulsion B&W that I am still using up. It ws given to me last year. It has been fridged/freezered since its production in the late 60's.

I shot a roll with a black velvet cloth as a background, and a grey card and white card filling most of the frame. I snipped off a bit more than a frame worth of it in the dark, and in total darkness tray processed it. D76 1:1 (500mL worth - same volue as used in my tank when doing 120), running water rinse and TF-4 fixer in trays for the recommended times. A brief wash, sqeegee between my fingers, and dry on a hair dryer set on low to speed the process along. The first batch measured a bit too grey in the highlights, as well as the grey. so I, as expected, had fog.

I make up a 1% solution(it is powerful stuff), and add increments of 5ml to the 500ml of developer that I use to process a roll of 120 on reels. Next shot processed as above showed improvement. So moved up to 10mL of 1% solution per 500mL. That was as good as I tried for, and it made me happy with the results.

The BZT does seem to cut film speed some however. The old film that was once 25asa, and I started shooting as ei12, I now shoot at ei8.

Happy experimenting.

The benzotriazole advice is sound.

The film might be very good if it had been frozen all along (I recently shot a 25-year-old roll of Plus-X that had very little base fog), but at room temperature it will have degraded. Still, you have little to lose for the effort, especially since you can expose and process a single sheet to see the status of each box.

This topic comes up rather often and a common piece of advice is to use HC-110. If you do a search here for "old film developing" or similar, you may come up with dilutions and times.

I forgot the exact chemical (might be the Benzotriazol, but I am not sure), but I firmly kept in my memory that Microphen is good for old stuff as it has the right chemical in it.
Also, it's good to use classic acid fixer and not the modern rapid fixers.

pipal said:

I forgot the exact chemical (might be the Benzotriazol, but I am not sure), but I firmly kept in my memory that Microphen is good for old stuff as it has the right chemical in it.
Also, it's good to use classic acid fixer and not the modern rapid fixers.

Click to expand...

Yep, Benzotriazol is the component chemical used to make a restrainer. It can be added to any developer. Normal is to make a 1% solution, then add 10ml per quart? or so of developer, and go up from there as needed. It is my understanding that this will also retard the ISO of the film, so one would need to compensate.

I don't know how a fixer can affect the fog level of film. I use Kodak Rapid Fix, with or without hardener, depending on conventional, or staining developer, and after a film is developed and stopped, or rinsed, and put into the fix, how in the world can fog develop? The only way I can see fog developing in the fixing bath, is if the fixer is either exhausted, or the developer has not been completely stopped prior to the fixing bath. Of course one would want to wait a minute or so after putting film into the fix before turning on the lights.