Expired Tmax P3200 Help

Hello fellow APUGers, I was given a bunch of old Tmax P3200 that expired in 1998 and I was wondering what the dev times should be for D76 or if you guys have suggestions for other developers that work better. I tried D76 for 35 mins and the negs come out pretty light, and I was overexposing on the camera +.5 stops.

Shoot at 800 and develop according to Kodak's instructions for D76 stock (The shorter the dev time, the less fog is my experience).

This film does not do well past its expiration. In general, the faster the film the more poorly it keeps. TMZ from 1998 may be useless (or may not, but don't count on it. I had some TMY from about that date, not cold stored, which has an obnoxious level of fog. You can print through it, but it's definitely not the best stuff, and TMY should keep better than TMZ.

'98? That film will have lost some serious speed and gained some serious fog. I would put expose it at 400 or 200 and you need to develop it in a low fog developer too. Rodinal is a good one for old film. I did some T-Max 400 recently in it which was from '93 and the negs came out surprisingly good compared to being developed in Pyrocat which was pretty much a mottled disaster. Hope that helps you.

General rules that I go by are-

Anything faster than 400 needs to be shot by the date on the package. 400 speed films are good for a year or maybe two past date. 100 speed films are good for several years past date. Slow films are good for quite a few years past date.

Those aren't bad rules of thumb for film stored at room temperature. Cold storage will extend those times very significantly though, in my experience.

shoot it at 400
and process it all in caffenol c
with a splash of your favorite paper developer ..
stand develop for 25-30mins

i had a bunch of the same film,
probably older ... and my film base was clear ( as seen in left image .. potatoes and film base )


here are some samples of one of the rolls ...

and this blog entry explains what i did
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

I would have considere that film "bad" in 2002... I agree it didn't keep well... or shall I say, poor storage/long storage is much more evident than others films with similar treatment.

SNIP

Bcarlsonmedia said:

...I tried D76 for 35 mins and the negs come out pretty light, and I was overexposing on the camera +.5 stops.

Click to expand...

hi again

sorry i forgot to mention this before ...

normal rating for tmy is 1600. brand new/factory-fresh 3200 would have worked ok, and 2400 as well,
but that film has lost a lot of sensitivity over the years .... whenever i use expired film ( that is what i use
all the time ) i hit it with a lot of light, no matter what the film is ... tmz, tmy, tmx, ilford, foma, forte ...
and develop in a strong developer.
i use the coffee developer i mentioned mainly because it is cheap and fun to use ... and it treats old film
well ... i stick ansco 130 in there as my print developer mainly because it is what i have on hand ..
( it lasts for a year or maybe longer in stock solution ).
if i agitated my development would be cut to maybe 10-15mins, but i would rather leave the room
to escape the fumes of my darkroom chemistry.

if you have a lot of this film, and you have a bulk loader, you might consider rolling small rolls
and using a variety of iso ratings, developers and times until you get what you like.
having a half frame camera helps too, you get 2x the fun some sell for CHEAP

good luck !
john

BrendanCarlson said:

Hello fellow APUGers, I was given a bunch of old Tmax P3200 that expired in 1998 and I was wondering what the dev times should be for D76 or if you guys have suggestions for other developers that work better. I tried D76 for 35 mins and the negs come out pretty light, and I was overexposing on the camera +.5 stops.

Click to expand...

Hello Brendan,

1) 3200 Is an exposure index rating at which this film yields acceptable results when fresh. The ISO rating of this film is much lower. From your post it is not clear what you mean by "overexposing [...] +.5 stops".

2) This very fast film does not age well. Have a search on the interwibbles: Slow films keep well, ISO 400 and up: less so.

In brief: don't expect the batch of film to perform well, expect it to be grainy and fogged. You might want to expose it @ IE 400 and test with HC110 or some other (cheap) dev that is known for low fog. It's not worth buying any developer for that you don't want to have around anyway.

Hope this helps.

Agreed. I just developed some old 3200 from about 2006...wasn't worth the effort.

Chuck it! It's too old.

I got something similar, just use it for fun, nothing serious. Expect fog, obviously.

If anyone is interested I have 10 rolls I want to sell or trade for other film.