Developing old film?

Hi
I've just aquired a nice 6x6 folding camera with an exposed film still inside it. I would like to develop the film cos I'm a curious person & would like to know what's on it.
I assume the film is black & white but there are no markings on the backing paper to tell me otherwise. I use Rodinal but am unsure of the timings to use on this occasion, could somebody give me advice (in the nicest possible way) on what to do next?

Edwin

P.S this is my first post

Hi Edthened!
Welcome to APUG! Congrats on your first post and your new(old) camera.
If you develop this film in B&W chems and it is colour film, you'll see the images while still wet (they will look purple with a brown streak) but once dry they will likely be a sh**y brown and will not likely be visible. (A fellow student did this in class last year)
Is there any way you can see the ISO? If you don't know the speed, over/under development is likely.
Anyway good luck. If it works let us know...

I'd load the film onto a reel and put it in a daylight tank and then look at the backing paper in the light to find out what kind of film it is, then take it from there.

Och David
I've already done that .

The backing paper is a dirty yellow but appart from the usual numbers there nothing else to see !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You could clip a corner with scissors carefully and look at the clipping in the light to seee whether it's color or B+W.
Diafine is probably the best off the shelf dev. for "mystery film."
Tracy

edthened said:

Och David
I've already done that .

The backing paper is a dirty yellow but appart from the usual numbers there nothing else to see !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Click to expand...

I just had a similar experience but in my case the film was clearly marked Kodacolor X, process C21. I posted a question on this forum a few weeks back with a success story as well.

Colour film processed in B&W gives good results. This is called cross-processing and lots of people sem to do it on purpose. Not sure why though.

I cut a few inches of film first and processed just that. Now, my film was at least 30 years old so I gave it 9 minutes at first, saw a bit of an image, cut another piece and processed for 15 minutes, got a pretty good but still thin image and finally did the whol film for 20 minutes. I used Ilford Ilfosol S. Someon suggested a compensating developer but I couldn't find one.

I scanned the resultant image and so it was easy enough to get rid of the dark orange mask. Oooops, digital talk. Here is a low res scan

http://web.ncf.ca/ac210/photography/kodacolorx.jpg


I wonder if your film backing is at the very end or very begining and there is no printing at that end.