Developing "found" 116 Super-XX

I was browsing an antique store today looking for neat cameras and found a Kodak Folding Autographic Brownie 2A. I already have a number 2 of that camera which takes 120 film, but this one had a roll of film inside it! I wound it up and paid a few bucks for the film and promised I would e-mail them the results. Now I need to develop it!

The film is size 116 and the emulsion is Kodak Super-XX. The film came on a spool with a wooden core; when did they stop using wooden cores? A reasonable guess at the age of this film would help me decide how to process it. I have Rodinal as a normal film developer right now and a 2-3 year old bottle of Ilfotec HC. I know the Rodinal is good, but the HC syrup is half full and has been open for a while. If it's still good that would probably be a better choice than Rodinal for such an old film. I also have a jug of Ansco 130 that I mixed a while back, over a year ago. I have heard that this can have a Rodinal-esque shelf life and can be used as a film developer. If so, do you good folks think that it would be a better choice than the Ilfotec HC or Rodinal? While I'm at it, any suggestions on developing times?

I don't have any benzotriazole but from what I understand it can destroy old latent images, and I'd rather have a very foggy something than a less foggy nothing. I'm pretty excited about this, hopefully there will be something on it! I've never found a film in an antique store camera before.

After figuring the processing out I'll have to get to work adapting a Patterson reel to 116!

- Justin

If you have a 100% dark darkroom, or can make a room 100% light proof, then you could use the 'see-saw' method in an open dish to develop the film - saves fiddling (and possibly ruining) a film reel.

It would be a shame, if the film still contains viable images, to lose them because your developer has gone off!

Rodinal usually lasts for ever so I would go for that. As for times... with an old foggy film and a latent image decades old, it is all guesswork anyway... I might take a wild guess at about 8 minutes at 1+25?

The film will have lost shadow detail - so the low shadow contrast characteristic of Rodinal would not make it a #1 choice.

The Ilfotec HC would be a better choice. If it keeps like HC110 then if it is less than 10 years old and hasn't gone dark brown it is still good. Check with a snippet of old film - bit of 35mm leader or something.

The recommended time was 20 minutes in D-76, I would try 18 minutes in HC-110 dilution B. Expect thick grainy negatives.

Generous time in the Ilfotec HC, say 9 or 10 minutes in their equivalent of HC-110 Dilution B. There was a time when Kodak's instructions for pretty much any B&W film was 17 minutes in D-76 at 68F, but that was for a much higher gamma than we use now, and my attempts at that time with vintage Verichrome and Super-XX have resulted in very dense negatives.

Do fix for a full 10 minutes or more, these old films were much harder to fix.

The old adjustable bakelite swizzle-stick tanks usually adjusted to 35mm, 127, 120/620, and 116/616 sizes. Very easy to find on eBay, from Yankee, Ansco, GAF, or FR. (Item 180405182107 looks likely, and item 120348694518 is clearly the "right thing".) Or you can search hard for 6 months until a 70mm/116/616 Nikor reel shows up on eBay. (Hard to find because most sellers don't realize they aren't 120 size.)

I have processed numerous rolls of old film (616 Super XX from 40s of 50s included). The formats I dealt with range from 17mm (HIT) up to 10cm (122). The one thing I learned is that there is no magic number (x minutes in y developer) associated with the film type; it is all subject to test. I can develop the roll or you may contact me at EmirShabashvili at hotmail dot com for the Q&A and try yourself.

Thanks Amirko! I processed the roll before your post. Gave it 11ish minutes in Ilfotec-HC at 1+31. I had set the timer for 13, but didn't realise it would try to curl so much when attempting see-saw development, I would have used a pre-soak to loosen it up. Makes sense though for film that's been rolled up for anywhere from 25-64 years.

It is EXTREMELY fogged (and slightly unevenly developed) so I don't know if I'll be able to pull anything off it using solely my darkroom. There are images though so I'll run the negs through a scanner tonight and see what I can pull off them. If it's not too hard I just might attempt to contact print them. It'll probably take a grade 5 filter since the contrast is so low thanks to fogging, but maybe it will work.

Hi Justin, congratulation on your success! For Super XX it is normal to be extremely fogged, better foget about printing, try to scan and then enhance digitally and then print. If you scan on a flatbed, mask everything but the actual image on the negative -- this way it will be easier to get the normal picture right away. Fill free to post the results here

Justin Silber said:

.......The film is size 116 and the emulsion is Kodak Super-XX. The film came on a spool with a wooden core; when did they stop using wooden cores?.....

Click to expand...

This is guessing, but Wikipedia states that 620 came out in 1931 - this was the same film as 120 wound on a narrower diameter all-metal spool. So it seems a reasonable assumption that the switch from wooden core to the spot-welded all metal construction happened around then, as the technology had come on stream to tackle all the other sizes in the inventory.

If so, to get an image at all after maybe 80 years in latent image is amazing!