Expired Super XX - advice?

[Thorney]

My Buddy Reg is a packrat. His house has 2 scanning electron microscopes and many other treasures.

An unopened box of 100 sheets of Super XX that expired in the 80s but has always been kept either frozen or in a fridge.

Can anyone give me advice on this expired film. I plan to shoot a few shots from 50asa to 400asa and am looking on a suggested developer and time (starting point) for contact or cold-light printing. Any other advice about potential fogging or prevention of same?

Thanks,
Thorney

 

[jd callow]

Hi Thorney,
I have a bunch of this stuff (3 full and 1 partial 100ct boxes) and did a bunch of testing of it (see this thread: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)). For my film, which is a bit younger than your friends, 93 vintage, my preference was rating the film at iso 100; D76 diluted 1 part stock to 3 parts water, 20c, and dev for 14 min. The film is great, but it is not the film I'd hoped it would be -- I envisioned using it for portraiture, but for this I've found that TXP suites my tastes better. I now have other plans for it.

Let me know if this helps. As you'll discover if you read the referenced thread, testing B/W film wasn't nor is it still my forté. With B/W I'm one of those people who follow the directions and then alter exposure and development to taste, which is essentially how I landed with the above time.

In talking to those who used the stuff back in the day, it appears that few, or at least no one I talked to, rated the film as fast as iso 200 even when it was not 14 years out of date. I suspect that you'll get good results in the 50 -100 range. As I recall I got great results @ ~iso 25 with ABC Pyro, and similar results with Microdol -X and D-76 with D76 giving me a bit more speed.