Disappointment: expired Cinestill Cs41 is expired...

I shot a roll of 2003 expired Fuji NHGII 800 in a pinhole camera today, taking advantage of raindrops on grass and spider webs, and flattish light that would emphasize color. This afternoon, I loaded the film into my tank, set up my tempering bath, set the sous vide to 102F, went and ate dinner, and came back.

I was a little concerned about the age of my C-41 chemistry; Cinestill Cs41 mixed in April, just about five months ago, previously used for seven rolls, most recently in June (I didn't realize until just now, when I checked my scan files for that film type, that it had been that long). I did a leader test, putting a cut leader from XP2 into the color developer.

The leader darkened, but -- crucially -- I wasn't sure how much darkening to expect before blix from XP2, so I went ahead and developed.

Even with a blix time of 6 minutes, the film is under-fixed, but much worse, the images on the film are very faint, barely visible against the translucent milkiness. Reblixing in fresh blix (or just refixing, I'll probably try that first, since I have rapid fixer ready to use) ought to correct the milkiness, but it won't fix the weak dye cloud images.

If I'd thought about it -- if I'd thought before opening the tank after blix that I might need to -- I could have inspected the film after stop bath and decided then whether it needed to be bleach bypassed, then after fixing, bleached and redeveloped in fresh color developer to boost the dye image -- but after blix, it's too late for that to help.

Lessons learned: Don't trust kit C-41 beyond the recommended number of weeks (8 weeks from mixing, by Cinestill's instructions), or if you do "push your luck", inspect the film after stop bath and before bleach or blix steps, because the silver image can be used to improve the dye image iff the silver image hasn't been bleached away.

The one hope I have for this roll is that, as weak as the blix was, (some of) the image silver might still be present. Plan of action (which might be next weekend; I need to refix, examine or scan the negative to see if there's enough retained silver to work with, first) is, if it seems possible, to bleach the film with fresh ferricyanide rehal bleach, light fog, and redevelop (in either a fresh Cs41 color dev or fresh Dignan 2-bath color dev), then recheck. If there's image silver left, this process can be repeated multiple times, strengthening the dye image each cycle. The hardest part is that for each cycle I'll have to inspect the film in a bleach bypass state to determine if the dye image is up to strength, before finally bleaching and fixing the silver image.

These aren't world-changing images -- I won't go into a months-long depression if I can't save them. However, learning how to managed this process might, someday, save some images in that class.

Thanks for sharing. I would suggest updating the title to be easier to find in the future. Using words like "expired", "C41" and "Cinestill" will help future researchers.

Donald Qualls said:

if it seems possible, to bleach the film with fresh ferricyanide rehal bleach, light fog, and redevelop (in either a fresh Cs41 color dev or fresh Dignan 2-bath color dev), then recheck. If there's image silver left, this process can be repeated multiple times, strengthening the dye image each cycle. The hardest part is that for each cycle I'll have to inspect the film in a bleach bypass state to determine if the dye image is up to strength, before finally bleaching and fixing the silver image.

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Light fogging is not neccesary, salts coming from a ferrcianyde bleach are not light sensitive. Just bleach and redevelop.

Expired film - I got good results only with low ISO films (<100). 400, 800, 3200 --> always bad.

darkosaric said:

Expired film - I got good results only with low ISO films (<100). 400, 800, 3200 --> always bad.

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+1 to that. Once I got a large batch of expired film, roughly 20 years old. The ISO 100 worked somewhat ok at EI 25, but ISO 200 rolls were barely usable, and ISO400 rolls were completely useless.

Kodak 35mm gold 100 is fine here 30 years old. Gold 400 is just gone.

What do you store the chems in?

I've had good results, fairly recently, with Superia Xtra 400 of similar vintage to this NHGII 800 (not to mention that last roll of BW400CN that sat in the camera from 2007 until June of this year); the film isn't the issue (I don't think). The developer has gone off and the blix is weak. With the film dry, the milkiness is mostly gone (but I can still see the film isn't fully cleared) and the very faint images I could see before are almost invisible, nothing there that would suggest there's image silver remaining. The leader test didn't darken anything like as much as it should; I just wasn't thinking when I poured the chems. I could have mixed the fresh backup batch and developed today instead of yesterday and been good to go (still got 10+ rolls of old film, exposed between 2006 and 2014, to be processed, so using up the capacity is mostly a matter of making the time to process and scan).

This batch of Cs41 was stored in accordion bottles -- I won't do that again. Too permeable, too hard to get the cap to seal well (bottle expands as it stands, indicating air going past the seal), impossible to fully clean. These are going out with the chemicals still in them, and I'll put the replacement chems in PET beverage bottles. They're 69 cents for liter size at the local grocery with club soda inside; pour out the fizz water, rinse, and take off the label -- will hold CO2 pressure for months, and easy to get a good reseal. Clear, but this stuff goes in a cabinet in a darkroom -- light exposure isn't a problem.

I've got all the dry chems on hand to make Dignan 2-bath (which I've used in the past with good results) and ferricyanide bleach, and Kodak C-41 fixer is still available and fairly cheap, or any neutral to alkaline rapid fixer will work. I've got no excuse for using dead chemicals other than my own laziness and inattention.

I've not had an issue with the multipart C-41 developers from Fujihunt or Kodak. Have kept Flexicolor dev. in good condition for much longer than 8 weeks - when stored in full containers.

Donald Qualls said:

I've had good results, fairly recently, with Superia Xtra 400 of similar vintage to this NHGII 800 (not to mention that last roll of BW400CN that sat in the camera from 2007 until June of this year); the film isn't the issue (I don't think). The developer has gone off and the blix is weak. With the film dry, the milkiness is mostly gone (but I can still see the film isn't fully cleared) and the very faint images I could see before are almost invisible, nothing there that would suggest there's image silver remaining. The leader test didn't darken anything like as much as it should; I just wasn't thinking when I poured the chems. I could have mixed the fresh backup batch and developed today instead of yesterday and been good to go (still got 10+ rolls of old film, exposed between 2006 and 2014, to be processed, so using up the capacity is mostly a matter of making the time to process and scan).

This batch of Cs41 was stored in accordion bottles -- I won't do that again. Too permeable, too hard to get the cap to seal well (bottle expands as it stands, indicating air going past the seal), impossible to fully clean. These are going out with the chemicals still in them, and I'll put the replacement chems in PET beverage bottles. They're 69 cents for liter size at the local grocery with club soda inside; pour out the fizz water, rinse, and take off the label -- will hold CO2 pressure for months, and easy to get a good reseal. Clear, but this stuff goes in a cabinet in a darkroom -- light exposure isn't a problem.

I've got all the dry chems on hand to make Dignan 2-bath (which I've used in the past with good results) and ferricyanide bleach, and Kodak C-41 fixer is still available and fairly cheap, or any neutral to alkaline rapid fixer will work. I've got no excuse for using dead chemicals other than my own laziness and inattention.

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I'm gonna say it's the accordion bottles. I store mine in those 1 liter plastic seltzer bottles and I've never had a failure due to age yet. I get 30+ rolls of film, I switch over the expired at about roll 15 as I don't expect much from it.

The accordion bottles, with their expired contents (also including a quart of Df96 monobath that was on its last legs at last use, despite nowhere near maximum roll count) are now separately bagged and out for garbage collection (my rural county does not offer a hazmat chemical drop-off). Replacement chemicals, when mixed, will go in the club soda bottles (same as seltzer bottles, but the contents cost 1/3 less).

As a testament to PET bottles, I dug up my old Diafine from the shed -- mixed in 2005/2006, stored in uncontrolled conditions (below freezing at times, occasionally near zero F, in the winter, above 100F in the shed many days in the summer) for the past five years. Both bottles are "sucked in" where the contents have scavenged the oxygen out of the small amount of trapped air, but the contents of both bottles are the same color they were at last use. I plan to do a leader test with the Diafine soon to verify its condition, but I have no evidence pointing to spoilage after fifteen years, five in uncontrolled storage. Of course, Diafine is something of a special case -- neutral to slightly acidic Bath A with huge preservative concentration, and nothing that matters in Bath B -- but even so, if those bottles were passing a lot of oxygen, they wouldn't be sucked in the way they are.

Donald Qualls said:

The accordion bottles, with their expired contents (also including a quart of Df96 monobath that was on its last legs at last use, despite nowhere near maximum roll count) are now separately bagged and out for garbage collection (my rural county does not offer a hazmat chemical drop-off). Replacement chemicals, when mixed, will go in the club soda bottles (same as seltzer bottles, but the contents cost 1/3 less).

As a testament to PET bottles, I dug up my old Diafine from the shed -- mixed in 2005/2006, stored in uncontrolled conditions (below freezing at times, occasionally near zero F, in the winter, above 100F in the shed many days in the summer) for the past five years. Both bottles are "sucked in" where the contents have scavenged the oxygen out of the small amount of trapped air, but the contents of both bottles are the same color they were at last use. I plan to do a leader test with the Diafine soon to verify its condition, but I have no evidence pointing to spoilage after fifteen years, five in uncontrolled storage. Of course, Diafine is something of a special case -- neutral to slightly acidic Bath A with huge preservative concentration, and nothing that matters in Bath B -- but even so, if those bottles were passing a lot of oxygen, they wouldn't be sucked in the way they are.

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I've used D-76 that was stored over a year and stock solution Ilford Rapid fix that's over a year old. No issues.

I use off brand club soda .48 a bottle. I drink the stuff first though.

Also, put the monobath in the same bag as the accordions. Both are useless.

Cholentpot said:

I've used D-76 that was stored over a year and stock solution Ilford Rapid fix that's over a year old. No issues.

I use off brand club soda .48 a bottle. I drink the stuff first though.

Also, put the monobath in the same bag as the accordions. Both are useless.

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Are you aware that Donald's work from as few years ago is what the current crop of monobaths are likely based upon?
He sort of knows of what he speaks when it comes to monobaths.

MattKing said:

Are you aware that Donald's work from as few years ago is what the current crop of monobaths are likely based upon?
He sort of knows of what he speaks when it comes to monobaths.

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No clue.

I just don't like the stuff.

Keep the monobath Don!

MattKing said:

Are you aware that Donald's work from as few years ago is what the current crop of monobaths are likely based upon?

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Here! Here! I want to be aware! @Donald Qualls what did you do?!?

Bormental said:

Here! Here! I want to be aware! @Donald Qualls what did you do?!?

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Must have been something. The old monobath must have been beyond awful.

It's a cool piece of chemistry but not something for me.

The Df96 I had mixed was well past its recommended working life (in weeks, though not in rolls) even though Df96, in general, is quite good. When fresh, it gives up nothing to separate developer and fixer, and gets the job done in under ten minutes even when it's had several rolls through the batch and needs double time to fully fix tabular grain film.

@Bormental I actually did very little -- but back in 2003/2004 time frame, after a forum discussion about monobaths and how bad they were for things like grain and loss of speed (don't recall if it was here or Nelsonphoto), I made up a monobath from HC-110 dilution A, Ilford Rapid Fixer, and enough ammonia to (by guess) restore the pH (offset the acid fixer). There wasn't much "work" involved, I just guessed at a couple factors, mixed up a batch, and tested it on a roll of Tri-X. It sort of worked; the second batch, with some adjustments, worked very well.

A year or two later, New55 picked it up from my postings, asked if they could use it, and with my permission, eventually sold it as their R.1 monobath. Later they upgraded to R.3 and then R.5, making improvements each generation.

The only thing I take credit for is demonstrating that a monobath based on rapid fixer was both practical and capable of working with no noticeable increase in grain and little if any speed loss -- this had been (seemingly) widely considered impractical. I never tested its storage longevity, never even tried it on other films than Tri-X -- my goal was to see if it would work (if I could make the developer work fast enough to coexist with rapid fixer without huge speed loss). When it did, I dropped it (I had a similar situation to the one I have now -- working full time with an hour commute -- and had little time to experiment, plus my "darkroom" was the house's one bathroom).

Using expired film, expired chemicals why being disappointed?

Donald Qualls said:

The Df96 I had mixed was well past its recommended working life (in weeks, though not in rolls) even though Df96, in general, is quite good. When fresh, it gives up nothing to separate developer and fixer, and gets the job done in under ten minutes even when it's had several rolls through the batch and needs double time to fully fix tabular grain film.

@Bormental I actually did very little -- but back in 2003/2004 time frame, after a forum discussion about monobaths and how bad they were for things like grain and loss of speed (don't recall if it was here or Nelsonphoto), I made up a monobath from HC-110 dilution A, Ilford Rapid Fixer, and enough ammonia to (by guess) restore the pH (offset the acid fixer). There wasn't much "work" involved, I just guessed at a couple factors, mixed up a batch, and tested it on a roll of Tri-X. It sort of worked; the second batch, with some adjustments, worked very well.

A year or two later, New55 picked it up from my postings, asked if they could use it, and with my permission, eventually sold it as their R.1 monobath. Later they upgraded to R.3 and then R.5, making improvements each generation.

The only thing I take credit for is demonstrating that a monobath based on rapid fixer was both practical and capable of working with no noticeable increase in grain and little if any speed loss -- this had been (seemingly) widely considered impractical. I never tested its storage longevity, never even tried it on other films than Tri-X -- my goal was to see if it would work (if I could make the developer work fast enough to coexist with rapid fixer without huge speed loss). When it did, I dropped it (I had a similar situation to the one I have now -- working full time with an hour commute -- and had little time to experiment, plus my "darkroom" was the house's one bathroom).

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Interesting.

Wow, that's a great story

Chan Tran said:

Using expired film, expired chemicals why being disappointed?

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Some of us don't have the budget to automatically buy new film when we have film still on hand past expiration. Sometimes the film we have is no longer available (like the one I used here). And in general, fairly recent expired films work fine, if the chemistry is good. Beyond that, many/most developers work well beyond what the manufacturer recommends.

In other words, there was no strong reason to believe this wouldn't work, aside from the weak leader test.

Donald Qualls said:

Some of us don't have the budget to automatically buy new film when we have film still on hand past expiration. Sometimes the film we have is no longer available (like the one I used here). And in general, fairly recent expired films work fine, if the chemistry is good. Beyond that, many/most developers work well beyond what the manufacturer recommends.

In other words, there was no strong reason to believe this wouldn't work, aside from the weak leader test.

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I agree.

We don't all have fresh Portra 400 floating around. I have a big roll of 400NC in 70mm from who knows when sitting in my freezer though. I expect decent results from it.

Cholentpot said:

We don't all have fresh Portra 400 floating around. I have a big roll of 400NC in 70mm from who knows when sitting in my freezer though. I expect decent results from it.

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And that goes double for a Fuji 800 color negative stock. I've got two more rolls; I expect they'll be okay in fresh color developer.

Donald Qualls said:

And that goes double for a Fuji 800 color negative stock. I've got two more rolls; I expect they'll be okay in fresh color developer.

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I have about a half dozen rolls of AGFA HDC 200 that expired a few decades ago. Shoots fine at ISO 64. I'm going to develop them later in line though, the first few rolls are reserved for the fresh Walgreens stash.