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First try developing 20+ year old exposed film

MattKing

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Those rolls look a lot like the 70 year old film that I exposed and developed last year.
They are of course, colour rather than B & W like my film, but their general appearance is similar (so dark and fogged looking that you can hardly see detail in them).
I got around to doing contact proof sheets of the rolls yesterday (I had a backlog!).
With 4 times the regular amount of exposure, the contact proof sheet came out reasonably well (see below). I'm going to try to print (optically) a couple of the results - I expect I'll get some usable results.
You will find the story in this thread: (there was a url link here which no longer exists).
The film is much larger than 110, but it shares with your film the fact that it was very difficult to scan. It isn't, however, impossible to scan. And it shouldn't be impossible to print.
I bring up this somewhat different set of facts to point out that the appearance of the negatives doesn't mean that they are unusable.
But I really do recommend getting a lab to try processing them in C41 chemistry. Send a note along indicating that they are old films, and will understand if the prints are less than optimal.
 
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TattyJJ

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This gives me more confidence i can get more out of these yet!
But a prohibitive factor in mine vs yours is the orange mask of the colour film which far as i've read makes them very difficult to do B&W prints from, as you said not impossible though... This coupled with the very dark film will be tough.
It might be worth trying a contact print, it could at least maybe give me something slightly clearer.
 

MattKing

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The mask has a fair amount of yellow in it.
As you are likely aware, a yellow filter is used with variable contrast paper to give you lower contrast prints.
So the challenge imposed by the mask is that it tends to give lower contrast results.
Good luck with the contact print. It may be clear, but those little prints are definitely not going to be large!.
 

Rudeofus

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TattyJJ,

the rolls you have developed already are far from lost. There are photographic bathes called 'reducers', which can take excess density off your film and make these pics both scannable and printable. If film is that foggy, and you develop it in C-41, it will develop the same high density, and there is no simple way to get rid of that density.

Here is how I would suggest you proceed: start a fresh thread about reducing density of this particular roll. There are people with some experience about this, who have used Farmer's reducer and other concoctions to save overdeveloped or foggy film. Parallel to that, get Potassium Bromide from a local pharmacy or a chem supplier, and do the test with increments of 1 g/l Potassium Bromide in DD-X. Use small clips of film so you waste less on tests. With 1 g/l Potassium Bromide you should already see a profound difference (i.e. much reduced fog), and with 2-3 g/l Potassium Bromide you should definitely get fog free negs. Using too much Potassium Bromide decreases film speed (which already took a beating from long storage), that why I suggested the test sequence. Try 0.5 g/l increments if you want to nail it perfectly.
 
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