cold bw film does it really make that much of a difference ?

omaha said:

Wasn't this topic thoroughly covered in one of the issues of Popular Photography from 1958 that were recently posted?

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maybe ... i don't read and have never read popular photography magazine.
someone gave me a full run of darkroom magazine, ill have to dig through and see

omaha said:

Wasn't this topic thoroughly covered in one of the issues of Popular Photography from 1958 that were recently posted?

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I would be interested in the article. Is there a link?

....

jnanian said:

maybe ... i don't read and have never read popular photography magazine.
someone gave me a full run of darkroom magazine, ill have to dig through and see

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Snapshot said:

I would be interested in the article. Is there a link?

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Apologies. Should have included a with my comment.

omaha said:

Apologies. Should have included a with my comment.

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thanks!
i imagined it was the truth

omaha said:

Apologies. Should have included a with my comment.

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Understood. Thanks for injecting some humour here.

yeah it does matter if...

yeah it does matter when it comes to pro films - they do not have the preservatives - or whatever u wanna call them - that are in the amateur films to keep them stable. The most important thing is to keep film in a dry fridge - i.e. at least in double sealed packets, and to put an extra layer or container to use when taking them in and out of the fridge. And I would also suggest not keeping any glues or silicones etc inside your film fridge - read the msds on these glues and they all say to keep away from food, and I would say the same for film.

jnanian said:

ken and steve

maybe you should read the first 6 or 7 posts to this thread...
you will see i am asking about PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

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Oh, I guess that you did not read post number 35, or post number 37, or post number 44, or post number 64, or post number 65, or post number 69. Those are all aspects of my personal experiences.

jnanian said:

i see what you are saying snapshot
but if you add up the price of the dedicated freezer
and electricity it uses for the number of years you will have it
filled with film does that cost really outweigh the perceived
idea that the freezer will add life to your film, or the
least cost solution of using a basement shelf and not being overly obsessive
like photographers tend to be ... it seems to be just another rabbit hole / magic bullet that fotographers tend to search for.

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A full freezer or refrigerator uses less power than an empty one. There is a lot of research published on that.

What is the cost of buying up a beloved film and storing it after the discontinuation of said film has been announced?

I see a big rabbit hole that some on the internet crawl down when they keep defending their opinions when the rest of the world pointed out the fallacies. One example that we see at APUG is when someone asks about photography schools and then ignores all advice posted in good will and continues to rant about the subject and views in the original post.

Sirius Glass said:

A full freezer or refrigerator uses less power than an empty one. There is a lot of research published on that.

What is the cost of buying up a beloved film and storing it after the discontinuation of said film has been announced?

I see a big rabbit hole that some on the internet crawl down when they keep defending their opinions when the rest of the world pointed out the fallacies. One example that we see at APUG is when someone asks about photography schools and then ignores all advice posted in good will and continues to rant about the subject and views in the original post.

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I don't think there is any denial about the fact that film changes over time, only about the significance.

I think the relavent point that John is trying to get across is that, the changes in the film over the time intended use are small enough for him to ignore.

I feel the same. My normal exposure tolerance range can easily absorb a bit of fog.

I honestly think that one of the reasons that many people refrigerate is because it's easy and makes them feel like they are doing something.

M6F6E6 said:

yeah it does matter when it comes to pro films - they do not have the preservatives - or whatever u wanna call them - that are in the amateur films to keep them stable. The most important thing is to keep film in a dry fridge - i.e. at least in double sealed packets, and to put an extra layer or container to use when taking them in and out of the fridge. And I would also suggest not keeping any glues or silicones etc inside your film fridge - read the msds on these glues and they all say to keep away from food, and I would say the same for film.

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There is no difference in a "preservative."

The difference is this: all color films change color balance as they age. Amateur films are made a little "premature" with the expectation they'll lay around a while before exposure, maybe longer before processing etc, so the "window of acceptable color" is wider. Pro films are made pretty much on color and refrigerated to keep them that way.

No need to keep the silica (not silicone) away from film, unless you might go to eat your film and mistakenly eat the silica. If that might happen then, yeah, same warnings apply. I keep my opened and re-refrigerated film in a zip lock with a large silica packet.

Sirius Glass said:

A full freezer or refrigerator uses less power than an empty one. There is a lot of research published on that.

What is the cost of buying up a beloved film and storing it after the discontinuation of said film has been announced?

I see a big rabbit hole that some on the internet crawl down when they keep defending their opinions when the rest of the world pointed out the fallacies. One example that we see at APUG is when someone asks about photography schools and then ignores all advice posted in good will and continues to rant about the subject and views in the original post.

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Yep. I've got a stock of Provia 400X in the freezer now. Some of it expired last year (bought this year) but was reportedly always frozen. I expect it's fine. The stuff that expires this year that I bought new I know has been frozen since in date and I expect to be fine for a year or two past expiration anyway. And considering I have about a 1-2 year supply, that's fine.

Granted this is about B&W. I do have some experience with comparing frozen versus room temperature stored long expired TMY. The frozen was much, much better.

M6F6E6 said:

yeah it does matter when it comes to pro films - they do not have the preservatives - or whatever u wanna call them - that are in the amateur films to keep them stable.

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That's what I thought too, until I set up some "heat stress" tests, albeit on color films.

This post is carried on from my earlier post, #67. In order to see how sensitive the pro color neg film of the time, VPS III, was to higher temperatures, we used a "hot box" set to 140 deg F (60 deg C). The way we arrived at 140 deg was to roughly mimic the highest automobile interior/trunk temperatures we could imagine, plus some.

Our film included both 35mm and 70mm VPS III, plus a couple other color neg films for reference. Two of the reference films were amateur grade, because like you said, the amateur film ought to hold up better than the "delicate" pro films. The method was to run sensitometric wedges on each of the films at the beginning, and then at some arbitrary intervals afterwards.

Results? I don't remember exact details, but we started out with smaller intervals, like 4 hours, then kept increasing in progressively larger steps. Nothing showed any change until somewhere over 250 hours or so, whereupon the amateur films started to go bad. The "delicate" pro films went quite a lot longer, perhaps 350 or 400 hours before they exhibited the first sign of change. Once change started, on any film, it got continuously worse over time. I should be clear that I don't remember exact times, but these are roughly in the ballpark.

We didn't test further, because this was pretty conclusive to us that none of our photographers were going to accidentally damage their film by keeping it in their car. First, none of the car interiors were going to get within 20 degrees of that hot, and second, even if they did, it's only during sunlight hours, a nominal half day. So our nominal 400 hour break point for the pro color neg film, roughly 2 weeks, would more closely represent double that, a month, during real days.

I would not want to extrapolate these results to other films. But if you think that amateur films are more robust than pro color neg films, then this is a case where you would be wrong!

Again, sorry I can't say anything about B&W, the real topic.

markbarendt said:

I don't think there is any denial about the fact that film changes over time, only about the significance.

I think the relavent point that John is trying to get across is that, the changes in the film over the time intended use are small enough for him to ignore.

I feel the same. My normal exposure tolerance range can easily absorb a bit of fog.

I honestly think that one of the reasons that many people refrigerate is because it's easy and makes them feel like they are doing something.

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thanks mark you said it better than i could.

Roger Cole said:

Granted this is about B&W. I do have some experience with comparing frozen versus room temperature stored long expired TMY. The frozen was much, much better.

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much better is very good.
can you elaborate what much better means?
clear base? good contrast?
thanks!

Mr Bill said:

That's what I thought too, until I set up some "heat stress" tests, albeit on color films.

This post is carried on from my earlier post, #67. In order to see how sensitive the pro color neg film of the time, VPS III, was to higher temperatures, we used a "hot box" set to 140 deg F (60 deg C). The way we arrived at 140 deg was to roughly mimic the highest automobile interior/trunk temperatures we could imagine, plus some.

Our film included both 35mm and 70mm VPS III, plus a couple other color neg films for reference. Two of the reference films were amateur grade, because like you said, the amateur film ought to hold up better than the "delicate" pro films. The method was to run sensitometric wedges on each of the films at the beginning, and then at some arbitrary intervals afterwards.

Results? I don't remember exact details, but we started out with smaller intervals, like 4 hours, then kept increasing in progressively larger steps. Nothing showed any change until somewhere over 250 hours or so, whereupon the amateur films started to go bad. The "delicate" pro films went quite a lot longer, perhaps 350 or 400 hours before they exhibited the first sign of change. Once change started, on any film, it got continuously worse over time. I should be clear that I don't remember exact times, but these are roughly in the ballpark.

We didn't test further, because this was pretty conclusive to us that none of our photographers were going to accidentally damage their film by keeping it in their car. First, none of the car interiors were going to get within 20 degrees of that hot, and second, even if they did, it's only during sunlight hours, a nominal half day. So our nominal 400 hour break point for the pro color neg film, roughly 2 weeks, would more closely represent double that, a month, during real days.

I would not want to extrapolate these results to other films. But if you think that amateur films are more robust than pro color neg films, then this is a case where you would be wrong!

Again, sorry I can't say anything about B&W, the real topic.

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that hot box sounds like fun ..
like the crash test guys, but for film !

i think we all underestimate the robustness of film
and treat it like it is an artifact found on antique road show.
your tests show that it is pretty resilient stuff ...

when i worked for a major "chain" portrait studio we used to ship film
(fed ex i think? ) in the can back to the main lab where it was all processed.
and i am guessing they must have done heat damage tests similar to your hot box tests
to make sure the film would have made it to the lab without-issue during transport.

thanks again mr bill its good to hear about real-tests&results going on in the background that most people are clueless about ..

john

Sirius Glass said:

A full freezer or refrigerator uses less power than an empty one. There is a lot of research published on that.

What is the cost of buying up a beloved film and storing it after the discontinuation of said film has been announced?

I see a big rabbit hole that some on the internet crawl down when they keep defending their opinions when the rest of the world pointed out the fallacies. One example that we see at APUG is when someone asks about photography schools and then ignores all advice posted in good will and continues to rant about the subject and views in the original post.

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nothing is wrong with that steve, do it to your hearts content!
buy a walk in like MAS has for all his super xx ULF sheets, and azo.
expired film is the (or was the) best secret of the photography world.
i was bummed when a friend cleared out the shelf of a colleague who passed away.
he dumpstered about 40 100 sheet boxes of 5x7 tri x and tri x ortho .. not even or barely expired
if i had known i would have bought it for pennies a sheet and i'd be using it today ... o well ..

every photographer has his or her rabbit hole.
for some it is lenses, for others it is ergonometric cameras
for others it is spot meter readings, for others it is magical developers
for others it is education and learning in a structured environment
and being forced out of one's comfort zone, and for others it is to
save/store their film. there is no wrong way just different ways.
and the hardest thing is to accept what people do even though
you might think it is wrong because for them it is as right a rabbit hole
as any.

jnanian said:

when i worked for a major "chain" portrait studio we used to ship film
(fed ex i think? ) in the can back to the main lab where it was all processed.
and i am guessing they must have done heat damage tests similar to your hot box tests
to make sure the film would have made it to the lab without-issue during transport.

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Hi John. Probably there was never a need for them to specifically do heat-stress testing, because film returned from studios would most likely print with the same filter pack as in-house testing would. So if there is no evidence of "damage," then no need to look for a cause.

We only did the "hot box" 'cuz of certain "fogged" film we would occasionally find when testing returned film for usability. We had presumed it was heat damage - perhaps someone left it in their trunk for months, or stored it above a space heater, etc. We figured to see just how sensitive the film really was to heat, then we could issue some sort of bulletin on how careful they need to be. But once we found how hard it actually was to do short term damage, well, no point in putting out a bulletin.

Now personally, I enjoy finding out about film behaviors like this, and it would have been fun to play. For example, if you ran the hot box test at several different temperatures then you might find that the base fog effect followed a pattern related to absolute temperature. If so, you might extrapolate it down to room temperature and make guesses as to how long it would hold up. But our testing was for a business purpose, and the costs have to be justified. So there was no sensible reason to spend any more labor money on it.

thanks again mr bill its good to hear about real-tests&results going on in the background that most people are clueless about ..

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You're welcome. I think most people tend to see photography only from their own viewpoint, where perhaps the local camera store's guru or local pro lab seem to be near-experts. Or perhaps a factory rep is coming into town. But the truth is that the largest outfits/labs have (or used to have) the best technical experts. (edit, to clarify, I mean the best experts on the "user" side.) They see more processing and they get more manufacturer support. But the typical photo enthuast, or even pro, seldom sees inside of those operations. And there's no reason for those inside to spread the word about their internal testing, so it's mostly unknown to photography's "masses," or even to well-connected pros.

Anyway, I think this question is important to a lot of people, so thanks for raising the issue. Best wishes to you.

Bill

jnanian said:

I think we all underestimate the robustness of film
and treat it like it is an artifact found on antique road show.

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Yeah, it's almost like a social trophy or badge of honor to have a fridge full. The classic thought here is that "I'm saving my TXP (or whatever) for something special". I've even had that thought myself about certain films, like 4x5 TXP. I hate it when I catch myself in a rationalization like that.

thanks again mr bill,

it makes perfect sense from an industrial+commercial+artistic
standpoint to know your materials inside and out ...
and now i know why the 800$ of 4x5 provia and velvia i used to order from NYC
were never spoiled sitting in a boiling hot ups truck and then on my front stoop for half the day
in 115ºF because its made to withstand those stresses ..
and i am sure with current technology companies do similar hot box tests with their electronic media and devices.

Mr Bill said:

Now personally, I enjoy finding out about film behaviors like this, and it would have been fun to play. For example, if you ran the hot box test at several different temperatures then you might find that the base fog effect followed a pattern related to absolute temperature. If so, you might extrapolate it down to room temperature and make guesses as to how long it would hold up. But our testing was for a business purpose, and the costs have to be justified. So there was no sensible reason to spend any more labor money on it.

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i love finding out behaviors like this, and sometimes i go out of my way to do similar tests with b/w films and papers and emulsions ...
i have purposefully destroyed my share of film over the years ... mainly to mimic film i had that was water damaged and the emulsion
either slid off the plate, or halfway dissolved and hardened back down onto the film base. i've also experimented putting other materials ON film which was
heated up extremely hot and printed with it, or heated up a rigid sheet of plexiglass 2" thick to make it limp as a noodle to form it into a shape to be rigid in when it cooled off.
and then printed with ...
like you, some of the greatest things i have found this way.

==

i know exactly what you mean mark

john

Mr Bill: Thank you for the interesting data on hot storage. Do you by any chance remember how close to the expiry date the film was at the time of your test? This would give at least a rough idea for extrapolation to room temperature.

Urmonas said:

Do you by any chance remember how close to the expiry date the film was at the time of your test? This would give at least a rough idea for extrapolation to room temperature.

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Hi, the film we tested with would have been fresh from Kodak.

I'm doubtful that you can legitimately extrapolate this single temperature point to room temperature; perhaps different mechanisms come into play at different temperatures. But methods similar to those used to predict "dark fading" might work. See Henry Wilhelm's book, The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs, page 86, for a Kodak graph demonstrating the method. (The book is available for free download from Wilhem's website.)

My limited experience-- buying A LOT of expired film the past 3 years or so-- seems to indicate that humidity reaching the film is more critical than temperatures between "freezing" and "room". Any sealed film I've shot I have been able to make work, including PanX 135 that expired in 1958 (shot at 20asa, fine and dandy, though 10 might have been a better choice). However, I have some TXP-120 from the 80's where the seller in West Virginia (gets pretty humid, at least for me in SoCal for the past million years) opened all envelopes and shaved the spools down to use in 620 cameras. By his own description, he just left it in his backyard workshop in a box for years until I bought it in 2011. It's badly foxed-- sticky emulsion and hairline cracks and mildewy smell. With all that though (and it's a cool looking pre ruined film when developed) the inner part of the roll still exposes within a stop of the 320 speed. And a roll or two has been indistinguishable from the 2013 expired TXP120 I shoot.

--nosmok

Thank you Mr Bill.

Sorry I was rushed when I wrote the earlier posting and what I had really meant to say was to correlate your high temperature observations, with room temperature. So fresh film means it should have had years of room temperature storage available. Something I have been pondering was if high temperature would cause the silver halide crystals to behave as if they were exposed. The large difference in storage time suggests this may indeed be happening, as the difference is much more than I would expect from a simple chemical degredation.

From memory Henry Wilhelm's book focusses on life of developed materials, and so does not directly shed light on this situation. For others looking at storage of developed films and slides I would highly recommend this book.

Thank you once again!

nosmok said:

My limited experience-- buying A LOT of expired film the past 3 years or so-- seems to indicate that humidity reaching the film is more critical than temperatures between "freezing" and "room". Any sealed film I've shot I have been able to make work, including PanX 135 that expired in 1958 (shot at 20asa, fine and dandy, though 10 might have been a better choice). However, I have some TXP-120 from the 80's where the seller in West Virginia (gets pretty humid, at least for me in SoCal for the past million years) opened all envelopes and shaved the spools down to use in 620 cameras. By his own description, he just left it in his backyard workshop in a box for years until I bought it in 2011. It's badly foxed-- sticky emulsion and hairline cracks and mildewy smell. With all that though (and it's a cool looking pre ruined film when developed) the inner part of the roll still exposes within a stop of the 320 speed. And a roll or two has been indistinguishable from the 2013 expired TXP120 I shoot.

--nosmok

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hi nosmok

experience is experience ... and yours speaks volumes.
film left in an outdoor workshop for years that came out OK sounds like a pretty good "experiment" to me.
much more daring than a basement shelf ... some of the tortures people put film through remind me of
the timex ad where the guy pulls the watch out of a tire and says " this watch was accidently left in
this tire for 50,000 miles and it still works ... timex, takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin' "

seeing this thread almost became a train wreck .. thanks for sticking with it ..

i apologize that this thread seemed to have been side tracked by science, common sense and logic ...
something i should have realized might have happened seeing there are so many technical oriented people here
or folks that have limited resources and don't want to "risk ruining their film"
or think it is a waste of time and effort and money NOT to freeze film
because it goes against common sense, "everyone knows you should keep film cold" ...

i am adding to and maybe modifying to the original question
"proof / verification" does not have to be densitometric readings but it could be your untrained eye
in my opinion PERSONAL EXPERIENCE is more important than anything else even if it goes against scientific logic or common sense.

so, after the film was loaded in the camera and processed did it workout for you the way you had hoped?
" yeah, it worked good enough " could be a valid answer just as " no matter what i did the film was DOA " could be another answer.
if you use a densitometer like ken did feel free to tell us what the reading means since there are a lot of people who don't use ( or care to use ) a densitometer
and these folks don't know what the numbers mean. just saying the reader said .20 or .15 or .30 means nothing
to someone untrained, its like speaking a language only people who do densitometer testing can relate to.
if you use a densitometer more power to you, but don't hold it against people who don't or don't want to, not everyone cares for that sort of stuff.

were you able to overcome "problems" because of the non frozen or refrigerated film
by change in development methods ( like using a developers that increases fog and stains the film or reduces it with restrainers )
or exposing the film in certain situations where midtones were more important than excessive highlights or over exposing the film by 6 stops
so it didn't matter anyways.

do you not really notice any difference ( even if there might actually be one but you aren't picky )
because it is easy to use a harder grade paper, stronger print developer or whatever to overcome what some may see as problems
that might have been caused by not cold storing your film.


it is too easy people who use cameras, film &c to be set in their ways so don't be an anti or equipment snob. because this thread
isn't about any of that stuff, its about film, whether or not cold storing it really made that much of a difference in the way the film was used.
and if this is a hot button topic where you get all freaked out because someone might be saying something
that goes against every cell in your body please do not bring your bad vibes to this thread. PM your friends that have the same beliefs
take your pet for a walk, speak to your priest or rabbi, do some origami, make a sandwich, step away from the computer ...
do something else because this thread doesn't need the bad juju ... or you can do your best to play nice and accept someone else's perspective on this subject

I've got a roll of HP5 sitting in my car as a test. I yank off a little bit of it every now and again to see. So far (1.5 years) nothing to speak of. I do keep the car in a garage when home, and this is VT, so it has had the equivalent of being stored both in an oven and in a freezer. (-18°F here this past winter, and almost a week where it didn;t get above 0°. It was over 80° yesterday, and this is really supposed to still be spring up here.)

Just tested some Neopan 1600 I have in the freezer, no noticeable fog yet, which surprised me, I've had 1600 show fog when within date.