Exposed film storage

[Mohsen al-Dajani]

Hi,
Most E-6 labs closed here in my country Saudi Arabia . So, I am thinking to send my 4x5 Velvia sheet film to the US for processing and to save on shipping cost I am going to shoot till I get a lot of exposures to send at once, 30-50 sheets for instant. My question is:

How long can I store those "exposed" sheets in refrigerator before sending them with postal service and fearing from damaging\affecting the film characteristics. and will the time be same for the film as exposed vs. unexposed sheets?

Best

 

[andrewkirkby]

Mohsen,

The latent image on an exposed film degrades but I'm sure there is not a huge difference if it's only a few weeks.

I've left a 120 kodak E120VS in my camera bag for 9 months and it turned out fine. Bag was in my car and would have been subject to some high temperatures (40 degrees) in the Australian summer. Your mileage may vary though.

Andrew

 

[mattmoy_2000]

Over the course of, say, a year, you shouldn't get a noticeable change. From what I've read, latent image fading occurs mainly within the first 6 hours (about 1/3 of a stop, but think: how often do you process your film within 6h of exposing it, especially if it's 135 or 120? How many of those images look faded (dark)? Exactly!) and after that it is very slow, especially if you're storing at low temperatures. Obviously the sooner it's processed the better, but without a spectrophotometer, I doubt you'll be able to tell the difference.