Developing times for 60 year old film.

Hey guys, yea I'm crazy, but I have a few rolls of Verichrome from the 1940's 1950's and 1960's an I'm sure it's all bad but I want to use it up rather than throw it away.

I started with the 1940's stock to mess with,



Anyway I did the math on this, and assuming this was stored terribly which it looks to be, we are talking1 stop every ten years so assuming it started with an ASA of 80 (but really a box speed of 40 because of the built in safety factor of the rating system at the time) so 60 years puts me at EI of 0.75 ahhh!!! Haha so in Stone's magic world this film was stored in a freezer for 20 of those years so I rated it at EI 3 (mostly because my meter will only go as low as 3 ISO so that's what I stuck to).

So I shot off all 8 frames from 15-30 seconds and a few at the I setting which must have been 1/25 or so but by the sound was sticking a little which is probably good, I figure why not see what a frame would look like shot as normal (it was T or I and thats it) in morning light (and took a few shots with some tri-x 400 at 1/30 of a second to give you an idea of the light). Very nice diffused light.

ANYWAY so now it's time to develop.

I only have Ilfsol 3 and DD-X at my immediate disposal.

IF freestyle/B&H get any Rodinal/Adonol stock in on the 4th as they claim I'll certainly pick some of that up, but that's all I really want to invest if I can help it and not have to buy a new developer just for one probably useless film. I actually have about 9 rolls in all (between the 616/116 rolls, and possibly one 620?) that are both Verichrome or Verichrome Safety or Verichrome Pan depending on DECADE haha.

Soooo, suggestions?


~Stone

Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1, 5DmkII / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic | Sent w/ iPhone using Tapatalk

There was a thread here from someone who developed 40-50 yr old Verichrome Pan successfully. I can't remember more but do a search.

I'd be surprised if the film speed formula you quote works exactly that way. Yes it will lose speed but there may come a point when film speed loss stops.

An Agfa Isolette I was given still had some 40+ yr old film in it and I had a local lab develop it. I am fairly sure they didn't use any special formula for developing and the subsequent prints were amazingly good.

The MDC if I recall gives times for Verichrome Pan. Do a search there as well

pentaxuser

Thanks I did a few searches here on APUG and couldn't find anything, I always look before posting, perhaps I used the wrong keywords


~Stone

Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1, 5DmkII / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic | Sent w/ iPhone using Tapatalk

I think testing is in order, but I would process normally, or something close to normal for a first pass. Extra exposure seems to be the key to bring the latent image up through the fog. I've read that HC-110 has fog-reducing capabilities, or at least is not fog-enhancing. You don't appear to have any on hand so I'm not sure these links will help, but they can't hurt:

http://foundfilm.livejournal.com/16982.html

http://photo.net/black-and-white-photo-film-processing-forum/00X1EE

http://www.geekosystem.com/expired-film-photos/

For what it's worth, I recently shot and processed some sheet film from 1944 in HC-110 for ten minutes at room temperature; it was severely fogged but produced a usable image when rated at EI 12. Good luck!

Jonathan

I typed in Verichrome Pan Developing Times and it came up with plenty of posts/threads. In the first 4 threads was my own thread where the person in question who had developed this film replied. I had forgotten that I had tried to dev this type of film from someone who had found it in a drawer after having a lab do the film that was still in the camera I had been given. The person's name was Uhner by the way.

There is plenty of material there about dev times and based on my review of just a few threads I think you can forget about ever increasing dev times to compensate for reduced speed. A small increase only may be better

pentaxuser

Sorry I should have read your post better. I note that in your case the film hasn't been exposed yet. My comments about dev times apply to films that were exposed when the films were relatively new but had sat undeveloped for years. However in my search I think there were posts covering reduction in film speed for exposing old film

Best of luck

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

I typed in Verichrome Pan Developing Times and it came up with plenty of posts/threads. In the first 4 threads was my own thread where the person in question who had developed this film replied. I had forgotten that I had tried to dev this type of film from someone who had found it in a drawer after having a lab do the film that was still in the camera I had been given. The person's name was Uhner by the way.

There is plenty of material there about dev times and based on my review of just a few threads I think you can forget about ever increasing dev times to compensate for reduced speed. A small increase only may be better

pentaxuser

Click to expand...

Thanks I totally forgot to search for Verichrome and did a general search for old and expired film so I'll try being specific about Verichrome but also the above poster answered a lot of what I was wondering thanks to both!


~Stone

The Important Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

jcoldslabs said:

I think testing is in order, but I would process normally, or something close to normal for a first pass. Extra exposure seems to be the key to bring the latent image up through the fog. I've read that HC-110 has fog-reducing capabilities, or at least is not fog-enhancing. You don't appear to have any on hand so I'm not sure these links will help, but they can't hurt:

http://foundfilm.livejournal.com/16982.html

http://photo.net/black-and-white-photo-film-processing-forum/00X1EE

http://www.geekosystem.com/expired-film-photos/

For what it's worth, I recently shot and processed some sheet film from 1944 in HC-110 for ten minutes at room temperature; it was severely fogged but produced a usable image when rated at EI 12. Good luck!

Jonathan

Click to expand...

Thanks, well a batch of HC-110 isn't so expensiceso I'll buy it with an order of bottles I need.

Side note. The thing that impressed me most was no vinegar smell at all so the film should be "good" and it's not safer film so it's even more surprising! Excited to see what develops


~Stone

The Important Ones - Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1 / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I just developed a roll of Verichrome Pan that expired in 1965, and was exposed over the past two days. Using a few hints I found lying around, I dropped my process temp to 64ºF. The only developer I have is Ilfosol 3, which I had been using 1:14 with new film—I increased the concentration to 1:9, figuring that would reduce the base fog. I also added a three minute (or so) presoak at 64ºF.

As it turns out, the negatives came out quite nice, and the film appeared to function quite well at EI125 (or thereabouts) using the sunny 16 rule. I haven't printed any of the negs for multiple reasons—I don't have a negative carrier yet (travesty!), and the negatives experience an insane amount of curl. Dunno how to make that go away.

hgernhardt said:

I just developed a roll of Verichrome Pan that expired in 1965, and was exposed over the past two days. Using a few hints I found lying around, I dropped my process temp to 64ºF. The only developer I have is Ilfosol 3, which I had been using 1:14 with new film—I increased the concentration to 1:9, figuring that would reduce the base fog. I also added a three minute (or so) presoak at 64ºF.

As it turns out, the negatives came out quite nice, and the film appeared to function quite well at EI125 (or thereabouts) using the sunny 16 rule. I haven't printed any of the negs for multiple reasons—I don't have a negative carrier yet (travesty!), and the negatives experience an insane amount of curl. Dunno how to make that go away.

Click to expand...

Good to hear, what TIMES did you use? Thanks!


~Stone

Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1, 5DmkII / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic | Sent w/ iPhone using Tapatalk

A Kodak chart in a PLI of that era says D-76, undiluted for 11 minutes.

I've been shooting some HP3 from 1963 at 12 ASA and developing for modern HP5+ times. Not bad, fogged and grainy but a neat look.

StoneNYC said:

Good to hear, what TIMES did you use? Thanks!

Click to expand...

Sorry 'bout that…

I started with the time listed for Plus-X (what Ilford's sheet calls Kodak 125 TX), which was a base of 5 minutes at 68ºF. Dropping the temp to 64ºF gave me a 6 minute development time. Ilford Rapid Fixer calls for a 5 minute fix time—I increased that to six minutes as well.

hgernhardt said:

Sorry 'bout that…

I started with the time listed for Plus-X (what Ilford's sheet calls Kodak 125 TX), which was a base of 5 minutes at 68ºF. Dropping the temp to 64ºF gave me a 6 minute development time. Ilford Rapid Fixer calls for a 5 minute fix time—I increased that to six minutes as well.

Click to expand...

So 1:9
64°
6 minutes

Sweet!

*runs to sink*


~Stone

Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1, 5DmkII / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic | Sent w/ iPhone using Tapatalk

Instant Gratification!!

I can't believe some of this...

1947!!!

Super curly film...



I'm actually impressed with the fact the film is so curly but the pressure plate seems to have kept everything nice an flat even at the corners (something my No. 1 Autographic seems REALLY bad at) then again this [EDIT: Kodak Jiffy Six 16 :END EDIT] is a much newer camera... Probably closer to the age of the film, the No. 1 is around 1915/1920's



Some base fog for sure, but my calculations for exposure seem fairly on track, the two shots I took at the "I" setting are blank, so I'm glad for my 30-ish second exposures.




Well that's it, thanks to the above poster for the info on process times, I think I may try the other developer, but I would like to see the other posters results as a film and print/scan to see how they differ to the ID-11 developer image as perhaps the base fog is better with Ilfsol 3.

This was fun...

I extended the fixer a lot just to be sure. Final times...



Yay APUG!



~Stone

Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1, 5DmkII / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic | Sent w/ iPhone using Tapatalk

VERY cool! Looking forward to seeing the scans...

rich815 said:

VERY cool! Looking forward to seeing the scans...

Click to expand...

Me too haha, I hope they are scan-able, SUPER curly...

They were also balanced on a rock and my car roof since the stupid jiffy doesnt even have a tripod mount even though it has a T exposure setting (thank goodness) at 30-ish second exposures in a camera that appears to have a cardboard shutter... Haha, so I'm wondering how much camera shake there was...


~Stone

Mamiya: 7 II, RZ67 Pro II / Canon: 1V, AE-1, 5DmkII / Kodak: No 1 Pocket Autographic, No 1A Pocket Autographic | Sent w/ iPhone using Tapatalk

To get rid of, or at least decrease the curve, roll the film emulsion side out and let it stay so for at least day. Or two. I have similar curling problems with some of those CN17 films as well.

werra said:

To get rid of, or at least decrease the curve, roll the film emulsion side out and let it stay so for at least day. Or two. I have similar curling problems with some of those CN17 films as well.

Click to expand...

Wait were you the person I was speaking with about using C-41 for CN17 but with 20 degree temps as to not damage the emulsion?

Also, would you do this before scanning? I'm a little worried, I totally forgot to use hardener in the fixer because I don't usually use it, I bought a batch of kodak rapid fix wit hardener additive but it's a giant bottle (probably for machines) and I don't want to crack it till I get some other storage containers.

Anyway, probably at least test scanning soon, it's dried and I can't resist....

Results... sort of...

This isn't the final scan, but I wanted to do a test run and "show off" hehe. I'm going to play with the height if I can figure out a good way to, as they don't make (or I don't know where to get) a 116/616/70mm holder for my epson, I have to use the 120 betterscanning holder and glass and sort of fiddle with it and put it in funky places... it usually seems to get me something better than nothing, this seems to be severely "blurry" but I can't tell if it's just the focus point, or the emulsion that because of the age doesn't take to light well, or what, so I give you the

"RAW Scan"



And also a slightly touched up scan using Lightroom 4, but nothing I couldn't have done in the printing process if I had (and knew how to use) a darkroom.



Thanks to everyone, this was a really amazing day for me!

OK second scan done, this time for some reason the image was even more blown out, the distance from the lens was less and I can now actually see the grain so I know I'm at the right height-ish but I'm actually using the Epson scan program, I can't understand how to use SilverFast, someday, but this means I had to edit the photo again in Lightroom 4, this time I can actually read the sign post, however just FYI in the larger versions this is much more obvious that there is an issue, but as we know APUG doesn't allow large image sizes so this is the best I can do... again...

RAW scan...


And the adjusted scan...



Thanks again everyone! this was fun, now it's time for bed and ice cream!

Sorry to multi post, but this is exciting to me, the next two are a different location, they actually didn't need any real adjustment at all, the scan came out "great" so this one was on my car roof so it wasn't quite level so all I did was crop the image to be straight.... two shots at different exposures 20 seconds and 30 seconds, I guess because of reciprocity failure/age or something similar, it didn't make much difference, they both look about the same in exposure.





OK three more to go, the next ones I did in the middle of the road (on a mini island) in the morning, curious to see if any passing tail lights showed up...

OK last 3 scans, now I'm not sure how OK this is with the APUG guidelines but I want to be clear I'm only showing different versions because the film is so old I thought it would be good for people to see just how messed up the film is and how much damage has been done by time.

These first two are almost direct from the scan with just a hair of an exposure lowering (maybe a half a stop), and the second is the second image with a lot of exposure adjustment and some contrast and dark's pumped up to make the image more clear. As you can see the edges of the film suffered the most damage from I assume the oxygen/atmosphere/industrial revolution haha, so there's a really bad fog, whats strange is that it doesn't seem bad by the naked eye, it's only in the scan that it shows up heavily, and worse when adjusting the dark/shadow levels. I'm not very experienced with this so I don't know how badly this would take effect in an optical print, but I would assume it would be similar.




And last but not least, the final image... there are 6 images preceding... this is the one I'm worried the moderators will be upset with but since I can't dodge and burn the old fashioned way, I"m trying it this way (and mind you I only learned ANYTHING about Photoshop YESTERDAY via a phone call to a friend who guided me through a few steps to get rid of dust and bad color saturation, so it's a MESS. But I wanted to show through dodging and burning techniques that even the edges of the film could be salvaged. I did a terrible job and there's a really bad "line" where the edge of the natural image drops off and the heavy burning begins, but hey it's an example. The last image is an almost 1:1 so anyone curious could see some of the grain if interested. So in order...

RAW scan...

Adjusted blacks and highlights and exposure level for "optimum" image

Exported from Lightroom to Photoshop and upped the exposure slightly and "burned" the edges in.

Sent back to Lightroom and brought back levels to "optimum" image settings. (notice 2 and 4 here in the center area are now the same exposure).


Now this image is sort of what I had actually wanted to shoot, but the Kodak Jiffy with its 110mm lens didn't actually have a tripod mount so I had to shoot far away or get run over by a car. The image size is so large so I can still crop it a LOT with 'good' image detail.



and for the pixel peepers... an (almost) 1:1 of the scan at 2400ppi ... it's not fully 1:1 because the 850 limit made the image slightly smaller than the crop I had made and I don't feel like re-doing it just for this, it's close enough you can see the grain...



ok that's it, I'm REALY going to bed now. I'm leaving this open for questions/comments etc. Mods don't be mad, it's not every day you get to see 60 year old film newly shot, I'm sure this will aid in actual darkroom owners techniques with expired film (I hope so).

[EDIT: does anyone know ... I'm PRETTY sure this is Nitrite film... I took a clip and went to the back porch, put a flame near it and it burst crackled, and reached my finger so fast I almost burnt myself it was went up so fast... so, any idea how safe this is to keep in my home? I know the images are junk, but it would be kind of nice to have them, but not at the expense of my life or the expense of my other film! Thanks END EDIT]

Thanks for posting your results. Most of these "how to process expired film" threads are all talk and no examples. It's good to see what film that old is still capable of.

Jonathan

Stone—

Yay! That curl was about what I saw on my Verichrome Pan roll. The neg scan I attempted was absolutely terrible since I don't have a transparency scanner; I didn't feel good about posting it at all. If I could get a couple of pieces of AN glass, though, I could run them through the enlarger.

So when are you going to take the plunge and get yourself an enlarger and stuff? My Beseler 23c setup doesn't take up much room, though with 116 negs you'll probably need something that handles 4x5s…

Congrats!