Gifted three 120 rolls of 20 year old Ilford Pan F 50

[Uncle Bill]

An acquaintance is gifting me three rolls of 20 year old 120mm Ilford Pan F 50. I plan to run it through my Rolleiflex.

Considering this film is two decades old what should I rate it at and which developer would you recommend? I have at my fingertips Xtol, Rodinal and HC110 to play with.

 

[erikg]

I would rate it at 20 and develop it in the rodinal. 1:100 10' @ 70. But that's just me. 20 years old, could be fine, or not, hopefully it was stored ok.

 

[Mike Wilde]

Extra patience for getting it onto processing reels. Old 120 gets really curly.

 

[Uncle Bill]

Thanks for the heads up on the curly Mike. The person gifting the film to me said it stored ok (nowhere near the furnace or the car's trunk or glove box). I think I will be having some fun with this film, so down to ISO 20, should be interesting.

 

[Mike Wilde]

Yes, I have used about 8 or 9 rolls of PanF+ in 35mm and have another 50' in the freezer as well. I shoot it at ei25, and usually on days with a low contrast range. It, and most slow films, don't like to be asked to try to capture anythong like 7 stops or more. I use it as a 5 stop film. This usally means a big shoot on a low contrast day, or to a camera I only pull out and tripod pre dawn or post dusk on sunny days. Tripods are a best friend, because it otherwise likes lots of light (and the shadows suffer) on a sunny day. When less than sunny, as the film I think prefers, hand holding is a very dicey action.

But man, the ability to enlarge is fantastic. It does not need a 'fine grain' developer, but at the same time I would not try to feed it to Rodianl in a 35mm form factor.

 

[Uncle Bill]

I got a nice Manfrotto tripod so I am well equipped.

 

[jeffreyg]

Try a test roll @50 of an 18% gray card ( preferred ) in constant light and change the exposure for each frame ie +2, +2 1/2. --- o, +1/2, +1 ---. Develop in your favorite. Make a test print from part of the unexposed leader. Where it turns black and there are no other steps use that time to expose a small print of each frame. The one closest to the gray car is your iso. Then hope all the other rolls are the same.