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Expired FP4+ push processing

CitizenNouveau

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Jul 20, 2012
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8
Format
35mm
Hey everyone! It's been a while since I developed my own (b&w) film, but I'm wanting to get back into shooting and developing. I have a lot of expired FP4+ that I'd like to shoot with but I'm looking for some guidance. What does everyone recommend as a forgiving developer and procedure for both shooting at box speed 125 and pushing 2(ish) stops to 400 or 500? Thanks in advance!
 
Two simple questions: how expired is the film; and why do you need/ want to push it?

Pushing won't give you any extra speed, & will raise both contrast & base fog.
 
Lachlan Young said:
Two simple questions: how expired is the film; and why do you need/ want to push it?

Pushing won't give you any extra speed, & will raise both contrast & base fog.
Click to expand...

I was just about to come back to the thread to edit my original post because I realized I had forgotten to add the date of the expired film, but you beat me to it!

The film is mostly from the late 90's; there are a lot from 1999. And I wanted to push to 400 for more use when natural light isn't available -- indoors and evening for example.
 
In the distant past I used to push FP4 and later FP4+ to 200 ASA, that is about it, any more, your shadow detail sort of goes out the door; big time.

I used D76 1+1 and I have almost no memory of how long, but I do remember it wasn't a short developing time.

Using D76 full strength at 200 ASA wasn't as good as 1+1.

Mick.
 
There are many excellent 400ISO films out there, why use a 125ISO and push it? Especially when you can have just as fine grain?
 
CitizenNouveau said:
The film is mostly from the late 90's; there are a lot from 1999. And I wanted to push to 400 for more use when natural light isn't available -- indoors and evening for example.
Click to expand...

20 years out of date is somewhat different from a couple of years - I've seen tmax from that era that was surprisingly OK, & I've used some Gravure Positive film from the early 90s that's pretty good still. However, a lot depends on storage & what you regard as acceptable results - I'd suggest a test roll in a developer of choice both to see how bad the fog is & how big the speed loss is. There are dozens of opinions on what the best low fog developer is, & I'm not going to try & add to that morass - a quick search of APUG will give you an idea of what people are using.
 

here's what i would do ...
over expose 1 stop / 10 years, so 20 years would be 2 fstlops extra light. as your starting point
so now you are exposing it at iso 30 ...
you can underexpose by 4 or 5 stops and develop for an extra 30%/"stop underexposed"

it might be worth exposing at 400-500, and instead of using an off the shelf film developer... if you have
something like ansco 130 or dektol lying around, i'd try either one 1:3 for 6 or 7 minutes and see how it looks.
a130+dektol is strong stuff and will help you gain contrast with your spent film, i have used these 2 developers
for film for years they work well.
if your negatives after this are FUBAR, i'd invest in fresh film and fresh developer .. it might be more fun than the mad scientist route.
 
Thanks everyone. I know fresh film would be easiest to use and develop, and I do have some at home. I suppose I'm just wanting to experiment and see what I can get out of this film stock. I intend to shoot at box speed as well, not every roll will be pushed. I have a lot of this film though, a lot handrolled into small cartridges of 20 exposures, so I figured why not try something different than usual. If the film ends up being beyond saving then I'll just shoot the new stock I have at home.
 
Give it a go. As long as the scenes are not the "once in a lifetime" type and you have plenty of the film then you will satisfy your curiosity. Show us the results. Now you know what the results might be, based on our range of replies, anything better was predicted is a bonus.

pentaxuser
 
The only "speed-enhancing" developer that I know of, theoretically, is Diafine. I've been meaning to try that one out, but will likely never get around to it.

I have no idea if it works on outdated film. So let's leave that in the curiosity box and go with the advice above.
 
D-76 Stock 200 ISO 10 minutes (120 format). More than 200 ISO, I'm not sure if it's a good film for that.
 
If you've of a bunch of it then it sounds to me like time to do some experimenting.
How was the film stored?
 
FP4 is fun pushing it at 200 with D76. The grain is rather high, but yet it looks great.

Here is a sample of expired FP4 (not even plus) pushed to EI 200 and developed with Rodinal 1+25 for 10.5 minutes at 20 deg C, shot with the OM 4-Ti and the Zuiko 28mm 2.8 MC:


Temporal diversions
The grain is sharp and just wonderful on it.

Here is another one from the same film shot at EI 200 with a Kodak Retina I and developed with D-76 1+1 for 15 minutes at 19 deg C:


A view of the old compost factory next to the Piraeus port
The trusty D76 did well on this, delivering a less sharp, but with a wider tonal range than Rodinal.

The push is a mere stop, but it is worthy when you get away from a camera shake of 1/8 to 1/15 or even 1/30 when the light gets low.
 
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