Don't know. But it was quite fresh when I froze it, and not off some dealer shelf. There are a number of folks who have invested heavily in the
last runs of Ciba and are taking a far bigger gamble than I did. It was simply an ordinary extra box in the freezer. ... my old custom for up to
20x24, at least. Then I figured I better start concentrating on RA4 because I was very skeptical that Ciba would be around much longer....
Next thing, no more Ciba. I wasn't about to buy an even bigger freezer for a lost cause. My gamble was on steady incremental improvements
in color neg film, the survival of Kodak in this respect, and even on incremental improvements in Fuji print materials as a possible replacement
to Ciba. I was correct on all counts, and in the meantime went thru the roughest stages of the learning curve. Doing commercial quality RA4
prints is quite easy, but getting up to the level of my Ciba work was the challenge. The hardest thing about color negs is that you can't just
slap em on a lightbox and see what you've got - you can scan and review em that way, but really, to understand how the nuances are going
to print, and what is necessary to fine-tune the image, ya just gotta print em! ... still, it's a way faster and cheaper process than Ciba ever
was.
