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Film stored in freezer or fridge?

mesaboogie

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So I have a freezer that doesn't get used for anything really. There is a chocolate bar in there, that's it. It's on the warmest setting it has, and I put film in there for 2 months, both inside a ziplock and loose, and both seemed to be fine when I developed the photos after I used it. So now I have a stock pile in there. Is this fine for long term or is the fridge side better? I was thinking a wine fridge but would rather just use the freezer if it's good.
 

BrianShaw

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There is a lot of discussion that has gone on relative to this topic over the years. Some folks freeze and sims folks refrigerate. Probably 60-40 in favor of freezing for long term storage. I never freeze. My film lasts a long time in zip lock bags and the chiller. Do what feels right; you can't hardly make a mistake.
 

BrianShaw

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P.S. The freezer will likely do more damage to that chocolate bar than it will do to film!
 
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mesaboogie

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I never eat chocolate that isn't frozen. So gross.
 

wiltw

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Freezing or refrigeration stalls color shifts. Period.

NOTHING (well, burial 2 miles underground!) prevents fogging due to the accumulation of cosmic rays, which completely pass thru refrigerators and freezers.
 

Poisson Du Jour

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If you are not intending to use any film within 3 months, freeze it. If you buy film and use it within say a week to a fortnight, it will keep anywhere, including the camera pack or the fridge. Freezing does not stop film from degrading over the long term, it only retards the process. Film frozen and long past expiry will often require a new ISO (or exposure index, based on experience) to make up for the loss of speed over a long period of time. Also, the longer film has been frozen, the greater the risk of brittleness and tearing (especially for 35mm; I have seen this occasionally with 120 rolls too). From my experience, B&W film will keep for quite a while "on the top shelf in the kitchen cupboard". For colour films, especially colour transparency, storage is a bit more picky. They are best refrigerated short term, frozen long-term and when ready to use from freezing, allow thawing for 24 hours.

APUG has heaps of threads on this very subject.
 
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It's been ten years since I put any film in a fridge or a freezer. Just use it up in time and you're fine, especially black and white film. Doesn't need it. Color film would benefit, which is why they usually refrigerate the professional color film in stores.
 

MattKing

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The advantage of keeping film in a freezer or a refrigerator is two-fold:
1) cooler temperatures retard certain types of deterioration; and
2) freezers and refrigerators are temperature controlled.

The latter advantage may be the most important. It is wide changes in temperature (including warm temperatures) that are to be avoided.

If you have a dry and consistently cool room, you can get most of the same benefit.

The problem with refrigerated film, and in particular frozen film, is that you have to be careful how you bring it up to ambient temperatures before loading it into cameras. Cold film attracts moisture, and moisture and film and cameras don't mix.
 

Gerald C Koch

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Freezing or refrigeration stalls color shifts. Period.

NOTHING (well, burial 2 miles underground!) prevents fogging due to the accumulation of cosmic rays, which completely pass thru refrigerators and freezers.

Depends on the location. An old salt mine would be ideal. However some minerals like granite are radioactive. I would never have granite counter tops in my house. They will peg the needle of a Geiger counter on its lowest setting.

BTW cosmic rays are not the real problem it is the normal background radiation that comes from many sources. Cosmic rays pass through matter and usually do not interact. One has to look at the number of milliSieverts encountered. This is the amount of ionizing radiation that the film would suffer. Ionizing radiation is what does the damage.

But the main cause of fog is caused by heat. Hence keeping film refrigerated or better frozen. Remember if you are not going to develop exposed film in a reasonable amount of time it too should be refrigerated. This is particularly true for Ilford Pan F Plus. There is something about this film that causes the latent image to degrade faster than other films.
 
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removed account4

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brian,
you forgot the .01% that think the whole cold storage of regular film is a bunch of malarky ..
 

Xmas

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Hi John

My Ilford box says
<20C ... 2020
My indoor day ambient rarely gets to 20C and film lives in insulated box so only sees a day - night average.

If I lived in Death Valley maybe.

Noel
 

removed account4

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hey noel
yeah i know i am part of the outlier class
i find the whole gotta keep film cold thing to be absurd.
ive posted the photographs before, iso 3200 film stored in a drawer for 10 years
not much fog, black blacks .. as always i hope people do what makes them be most comfortable
and yMMV
 

Gerald C Koch

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IIRC Agfa stored their master rolls at -10C. Agfa film continued to be sold long after Agfa folded.
 

Xmas

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IIRC Agfa stored their master rolls at -10C. Agfa film continued to be sold long after Agfa folded.
Yes their receiver ran the coater through 06 and the last expiry was Dec14 I bought in Oct13.
 

Ricardo Miranda

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IIRC Agfa stored their master rolls at -10C. Agfa film continued to be sold long after Agfa folded.
Yes, Gerald. Remember that these are industrial freezers, not your domestic one.
Xmas can tell you what happened to a friend's cannister that was left in a fridge.
It wasn't nice to see.
 

removed account4

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Yes, Gerald. Remember that these are industrial freezers, not your domestic one.
Xmas can tell you what happened to a friend's cannister that was left in a fridge.
It wasn't nice to see.

did it turn into a pumpkin or a ham and cheese sandwich when t wasn't pulled out in time ?
 

Ricardo Miranda

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Lets put this way: you wouldn't want to open the canister, there was some fizzling going on.
 

Luis-F-S

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I've had 20 boxes of Tri-X 4x5 that expired in 1988 frozen since new. One box was at room temperature. I can find no difference in the fb+f between them. Both are around 0.34.
 

MattKing

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I've had 20 boxes of Tri-X 4x5 that expired in 1988 frozen since new. One box was at room temperature. I can find no difference in the fb+f between them. Both are around 0.34.
Do they respond to exposure with the same contrast and spectral sensitivity?
 

Andrew O'Neill

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I have a large supply of 4x5 HP5 which I have been keeping in the freezer and slowly using since '05. I have noticed an ever so slight increase in B+F... I recently found a 35mm roll of HP5 in the back of a drawer in my darkroom. It's been in there since '02. The hottest it could ever get in there would be about 26C. Shot it, developed it and other than a slight increase in B+F, looks great.
 
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I still am 100% confident that as long as unexposed film is kept at reasonably dry and tempered room temperature, it will keep just fine without being refrigerated until its expiration date. I am shooting my last two rolls of Ilford Pan 400 that expired in July 2015, and I see no difference between the new rolls and the older ones in my resulting prints.
Conversely, I was recently given some expired black and white film, about 5-10 years past date, and they yielded horribly fogged, grainy results with altered tonality. All 35mm, Delta 400, TMax 400, and Tri-X 400. The TMax 100 was normal; this seems to be a particularly robust film.

Color film I might take more precautions with, but at the same time I've used one year expired Portra that I never stored in anything but my relatively cool basement, with zero problems. I'm sure that color shifts can be measured, but I also don't really care that much, so I'm the wrong person to advise on that.
 

Agulliver

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Film changes with age for a few reasons.

Chemical changes happen over time, but can be slowed by reducing the temperature as the rate of most chemical reactions is proportional to temperature.

Cold storage cannot completely stop the process, nor can it stop cosmic rays or background radiation slowly fogging the film. I have found, regardless of freezing, fridging or keeping in a cupboard, that there is often a little age fogging after a decade.

Colour film tends to be more affected than B&W, in my experience. You might see colour shifts and more age fogging for a given ISO rating with colour negative film and even more with reversal.

My own personal experiences lead me to store film in a cupboard under my bed where it is reasonably cool and very dark, unless any of the factors below are in play.
1) The film is colour and I intend to keep it beyond 2 years after it's expiry date
2) The film is ultra high speed (colour or B&W)
3) The film is likely to be kept more than 5 years beyond it's expiry date.

That said, three years ago I pulled my long disused bulk loader out of the garage which fluctuates from freezing to 40C, and found I had about 10 rolls of old tri-x left in it, which expired about 1999. It had been in the garage since 2003. I spooled off enough to make a 20 exposure cassette in 2013 and it was fine...so I spooled off the rest. The last two rolls are going to be used this year...but it's still remarkably good. I cannot visually tell the difference between this and the film when it was new.

I've also used 10 year expired C41 colour films, and while they do tend to have a small colour shift either to blue or red, they generally do OK even if stored without any special care. Some do suffer radiation fogging but with careful printing or other post-development tweaking they give OK results.

When cold storing I tend to put film an a zippy bag and put it in the freezer. It never seems to cause any issues with film becoming brittle. I usually let it thaw at least 24 hours but have occasionally used a film within 3 hours of unfreezing. As long as it's dry, it should be fine.
 

wiltw

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Well, my commentary was based upon research by NASA 20 years ago:

"Space radiation is very penetrating and difficult to shield against. Protons, alpha particles (A in figure 3), beta particles (B in figure 3) and some high Z particles make up the majority of the radiation encountered during Shuttle missions. Shielding for beta particles is easier to construct than for the heavier particles. A beta particle colliding with an element such as 8 hydrogen (the smallest element) is analogous to a BB shot at a bowling ball. Most shielding elements are at least 12 times as massive as hydrogen and should have no problem stopping beta particles. The more massive radiation particles are more difficult to control. Shielding, which does not stop these particles, will reduce their energy and momentum. Since this type of radiation has a high LET, these particles are more likely to release energy....The shielding bag does not afford much protection in its present configuration. The bagged sample and sample 5 were compared to evaluate the bag's usefulness. The bag helped 5030 film slightly with a 4 percent reduction in minimum density increase. For most films, the bag afforded no protection. The bag was designed to shield against softer and less penetrating x-rays. However, the film was exposed to high energy particles which passed through the bag quite easily"​

...and by additional commentary from physicists with whom I have worked during the past 15 years

i asked if they knew anything about light sensitive photographic film and cosmic rays' affects on film, cause fogging, even when stored in a freezer. I was told that it isn't the cosmic rays per se, but the muons that are created when cosmic rays come into contact with other particles, which fogs the film. And as the muons are an inherent offshoot resulting from the cosmic radiation, the Technical Committee ISO/TC 42, responsible for the International Standard ISO 18928 doesn't differentiate muons from the cosmic radiation.
Finally, another comment from Kodak, about ambient radiation:
Ambient-Background Radiation
(effects on raw stock)


Ambient gamma radiation is composed of two sources: a low-energy component which arises from the decay of radionuclides and a high-energy component which is the product of the interaction of cosmic rays with the earths upper atmosphere. The radionuclides responsible for the low-energy photons exist in soil and rock and are carried into earth-derived building materials, such as concrete. Upon exposure to ambient-background radiation, photographic negative materials can exhibit an increase in minimum density, a loss in contrast and speed in the dark areas, and an increase in granularity. The changes in film performance are determined by several factors, such as the film speed and length of time exposed to the radiation before the film is processed. A film with an exposure index of 500 can exhibit about three times the change in performance as a film with an index of 125. While this effect on film raw stock is not immediate, it is one reason why we suggest exposing and processing film as soon as possible after purchase. We recommend a period of no more than six months from the time of film purchase before processing, provided it has been kept under specified conditions. Extended periods beyond six months may affect faster speed films as noted above, even if kept frozen. The only way to determine the specific effect of ambient-background radiation is with actual testing or measurements and placing a detector in the locations where the film was stored. The most obvious clue is the observance of increased granularity, especially in the light areas of the scene.​
 
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thuggins

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Kodak recommended that color film be kept refrigerated to prevent color shifts. Apparently this was a real and significant enough problem that they published guidelines for it, and photo stores kept their professional film in a fridge. IIRC the difference between the "professional" and "consumer" films (e.g. Ektachrome vs. Elite Chrome) was some type of aging process to help stabilize the colors. This obviously must have caused some degradation in the color or they would have done it with all films. I've got about 50 rolls each of VS and Provia 400 that have been refrigerated since they were bought, that will be used this summer. We'll see how it goes.

Kodak specifically suggested refrigeration and not freezing. Apparently, temperature around the mid 40's was adequate to prevent the color shifting. I don't recall any mention of damage from freezing, but the lower temperatures offer no benefit and do create an issue with defrosting, as mentioned above.

As others have noted this is only an issue with color film, not B&W.