Can film get too cold -80c (-110f) or -77k

snaggs · Sep 16, 2012

My friend has a lab so I can store some film at -80c for nothing, or -77k for about $150 a year to cover LN2 consumption. Anybody else looked at this? What do I use for radiation? Are full lead containers required? I wont be stored with the nuclear isotopes but in the bio storage, so im only concerned with background radiation.

Daniel.

MartinP · Sep 16, 2012

Hmmm . . . . -77K ????? Really?

[-80C would be approximately +193K, if I recall my physics correctly]

snaggs · Sep 16, 2012

Yeh, LN2, maybe I mean 77K.

Alan W · Sep 16, 2012

How long are you planning on storing this film?

brianmquinn · Sep 16, 2012

It is routine to put X-Ray film at -80C to make it MORE sensitive to radiation (and thus fog).

This has been known since the 1950s.

http://iopscience.iop.org/0508-3443/7/10/410/pdf/0508-3443_7_10_410.pdf

Also no amout of lead will save your film from cosmic rays.

I suggest you store it a -20 to lessen chemical degredation. You should get 5 years past the date for 400 speed, 10 years for 100 speed and maybe 25 years for 25 speed.
I suggest unless the film you have is no longer made and can not be replaced just buy more small batches.

Gerald C Koch · Sep 16, 2012

You can still buy Agfa camera film years after they stopped manufacture. They stored their uncut rolls at -10 C. I would assume that Agfa had studied long term storage and arriived at this temperature as optimal.

Other factors are beta, gamma and cosmic radiation. An inch or so for beta radiation and several inches of lead to reduce any gamma radiation. You would need to store film in a deep salt mine to reduce cosmic rays.

BTW, the Kelvin scale does not go lower than 0oK which is absolute zero so a temperature of -77oK is noonsensical. Whether a symbol is capitalized or not is important in science. A capital K is used for Kelvin temperature.

pentaxuser · Sep 16, 2012

Gerald C Koch said:
You would need to store film in a deep salt mine to reduce cosmic rays.QUOTE]

J. S. limited or was that unlimited but a largely one man business used to offer this service free of charge to the right or was that wrong people. He insisted they stayed with the film all the time

Fortunately J.S. went bust in 1953. Good news sometimes when that kind of service disappears

pentaxuser

Steve Smith · Sep 16, 2012

Gerald C Koch said:
BTW, the Kelvin scale does not go lower than 0oK

It also doesn't need the degree symbol.

Steve.

Gerald C Koch · Sep 16, 2012

Steve Smith said:
It also doesn't need the degree symbol.

Curious Fahrenheit, Celsius, and Rankin all use the degree sysmbol. As you say Kelvin doesn't. Never thought about it before. As someone once remarked, "The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them."

lxdude · Sep 17, 2012

It's common to say degrees Kelvin, but incorrect. The reason is that it is an absolute scale rather than a relative scale. It's stated as (for example) 5500 kelvins (small k), or 5500K. Essentially, 'kelvin' replaces the word 'degree'.

It used to be called degrees Kelvin, but that was changed.

wogster · Sep 17, 2012

snaggs said:
My friend has a lab so I can store some film at -80c for nothing, or -77k for about $150 a year to cover LN2 consumption. Anybody else looked at this? What do I use for radiation? Are full lead containers required? I wont be stored with the nuclear isotopes but in the bio storage, so im only concerned with background radiation.

Daniel.

The only real issue with extreme cold is that it takes a lot longer to come up to normal temperature and it's a lot more fragile until it does. At -15℃ you need to be careful winding film because it can break in the camera. At -80℃ a roll that gets dropped could shatter. BTW the coldest that LN2 can make something is 77K because LN2 itself boils at 77K and freezes at 63K....

Brian C. Miller · Sep 17, 2012

I have used B&W film that was frozen for 20 years and it had no fog. Stuff that was opened, and then frozen, has typically had about 1/2-inch of fog at the opened end. Other than that, nothing. I suspect that film fogging is actually due to local radiation, so it varies with your location.

brianmquinn · Sep 17, 2012

If you are talking about B&W then fog is really not an issue. You can just print through the fog.
Loss of contrast is a bigger issue but again with B&W it is easy to adjust for as long as you have several rolls of film from the same batch. Once you know how to develop one roll you can use the same method for the other rolls in the batch.
The real issue is fade of color dyes and the fact they fade at different rates. Low temperature will slow down the fade of these dyes.

traveller · Sep 17, 2012

Some years ago I did give it a try at -80 °C with polyester based B&W film. After defrosting slowly, 1 day at -40 °C, 1 day at -20 °C and 1 day at +4 °C, the emulsion had signs of freezer burn at some places and cracks on other places. I didn't try other defrosting cycles.

I have no problems so far with film stored at -40 °C but most of my film is stored at -20 °C

Can film get too cold -80c (-110f) or -77k

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