handling professional color film

I have an old reference book from Kodak where they talk about the differences between consumer and professional grade color film. Consumer film is designed to be left in the camera for months. Professional film is very sensitive, should be refrigerated as soon as possible and developed within one hour of shooting.

So, I'm sure this is not true anymore. Still, my workflow gives me cause to investigate further. I have color film shipped to me. I put it in the refrigerator, then take it out to shoot and return to the refrigerator. In a week or two, I will ship out film to be processed.

Should I consider consumer grade film or is my handling OK in this day and age.

Thanks!

You are handling your film appropriately.

The old "professional" film was designed to give extremely consistent response from roll to roll within a single batch, and very consistent response across multiple batches.

The sort of consistency that benefited high volume shooters like school photographers and catalogue photographers.

Once the photographers and their labs had something dialed in, they could obtain a large volume of consistent results with little or no adjustment.

That professional film required strictly controlled storage and use to maintain that high level of consistency. If, however, those conditions were allowed to vary, the film still performed well, just not with the same roll to roll consistency.

In contrast, consumer grade films were designed with the realities of retail and amateur conditions in mind. They were expected to change over time.

My impression is that the more modern films don't suffer as much from storage variation as the older ones do, but I've never done the sort of work where high levels of consistency are critical.

I would say that very few people develop any film within 1 hour of shooting.I have shot color film and not had it developed for weeks,months even.It looks no different to anything I've developed in a hurry.Relax,shoot it and develop it as soon as you can.More importantly,I would say,don't subject your film-exposed or unexposed- to extreme heat.Modern emulsions are very stable.

swanlake1 said:

I have an old reference book from Kodak where they talk about the differences between consumer and professional grade color film. Consumer film is designed to be left in the camera for months. Professional film is very sensitive, should be refrigerated as soon as possible and developed within one hour of shooting.

So, I'm sure this is not true anymore. Still, my workflow gives me cause to investigate further. I have color film shipped to me. I put it in the refrigerator, then take it out to shoot and return to the refrigerator. In a week or two, I will ship out film to be processed.

Should I consider consumer grade film or is my handling OK in this day and age.

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Fridge before opening is fine, it's not something I worry about anymore though.

Fridge after opening protective container has some risk of condensation issues. Benefit is low.

Yes, there is some loss of latent image in the first minutes after shooting, fridge won't stop that. This is about minutes if you are counting hours or days before processing it isn't worth worrying about, the degradation curve flattens out quickly. IMO not something to worry about at all.

Great, thanks everyone! I like reading old Kodak publications...excellent information. But times do change and it's good to ask around.

Another film use that was helped by that sort of handling was motion picture film. You can imagine how important precise consistency was when shooting an entire film. Film for an entire production was purchased from one batch number, and processing was usually performed within hours of exposure.

Once the film packaging has been opened, the film [and camera] should be placed in a Zip-Lok bag before going back into the refrigerator. The film [and camera] should be allowed to get to ambient temperature before opening the Zip-Lok bag.

As a photographer using professional film for well over 30 years, I can say ... relax.
I regularly refrigerate/freeze/load/unload/refrigerate and refreeze and leave film out for months at a time. Nothing I or the numerous labs have seen over the years resembles anything akimbo with e.g. colour balance, neutrality, shadows/highlights, speed or sundry stability. It's a good 20 years past in my 35mm film time when I had little regard for the supposed moral ethos of adhering to a refrigeration schedule for film. I'd go bicycle touring with rolls of PKL200 (Kodachrome Professional) exposed to all manner of extremes of temperature. I actually think we have it good in this day and age with film being so adept and holding up so well. Just don't toast it over a glowing hearth.

btaylor said:

Another film use that was helped by that sort of handling was motion picture film. You can imagine how important precise consistency was when shooting an entire film. Film for an entire production was purchased from one batch number, and processing was usually performed within hours of exposure.

Click to expand...

I was reading recently about the old Cinerama process......three cameras, three separate films, and three projectors all side-by-side to produce one wide screen film.
Apparently one of the biggest problems with the process was matching the three films in colour and density so that the "joins" didn't show. Even using the same emulsion numbers, the process chemicals for both negative and positive, and the printing filtration had to be exactly matched, even down to the bulbs and their voltages in the printing machines.

Sirius Glass said:

Once the film packaging has been opened, the film [and camera] should be placed in a Zip-Lok bag before going back into the refrigerator. The film [and camera] should be allowed to get to ambient temperature before opening the Zip-Lok bag.

Click to expand...

I have often refrigerated exposed film that I couldn't process for a while and this is the method I've used.

I can't say for sure, lacking controlled testing, that it helps but it certainly has never done any harm.

Poisson Du Jour said:

As a photographer using professional film for well over 30 years, I can say ... relax.
I regularly refrigerate/freeze/load/unload/refrigerate and refreeze and leave film out for months at a time. Nothing I or the numerous labs have seen over the years resembles anything akimbo with e.g. colour balance, neutrality, shadows/highlights, speed or sundry stability. It's a good 20 years past in my 35mm film time when I had little regard for the supposed moral ethos of adhering to a refrigeration schedule for film. I'd go bicycle touring with rolls of PKL200 (Kodachrome Professional) exposed to all manner of extremes of temperature. I actually think we have it good in this day and age with film being so adept and holding up so well. Just don't toast it over a glowing hearth.

Click to expand...

Roasting TMax on an open fire, the fumes gently nipping at your nose....

Poisson Du Jour said:

As a photographer using professional film for well over 30 years, I can say ... relax.
I regularly refrigerate/freeze/load/unload/refrigerate and refreeze and leave film out for months at a time. Nothing I or the numerous labs have seen over the years resembles anything akimbo with e.g. colour balance, neutrality, shadows/highlights, speed or sundry stability. It's a good 20 years past in my 35mm film time when I had little regard for the supposed moral ethos of adhering to a refrigeration schedule for film. I'd go bicycle touring with rolls of PKL200 (Kodachrome Professional) exposed to all manner of extremes of temperature. I actually think we have it good in this day and age with film being so adept and holding up so well. Just don't toast it over a glowing hearth.

Click to expand...

Roasting Ektar on an open fire, the fumes gently nipping at your nose....

Sirius Glass said:

Once the film packaging has been opened, the film [and camera] should be placed in a Zip-Lok bag before going back into the refrigerator. The film [and camera] should be allowed to get to ambient temperature before opening the Zip-Lok bag.

Click to expand...

I have never refrigerated the whole camera because of an unfinished roll inside it. Well, in my case (and in Sirius' case too), only the back would go to the fridge!

I use that stretchy PVC film used for wrapping leftovers in the kitchen. Several layers to make sure no moisture will get inside.

madgardener said:

Roasting TMax on an open fire, the fumes gently nipping at your nose....

Click to expand...

I always like the example one of my high school English teachers gave of a dangling participle: "While sitting by the fire the aroma of the toasted marshmallows pierced the air."

I think I will go out and split some infinitives now.

MattKing said:

...
The "professional" film was designed to give extremely consistent response from roll to roll within a single batch, and very consistent response across multiple batches.
...
That professional film required strictly controlled storage and use to maintain that high level of consistency. If, however, those conditions were allowed to vary, the film still performed well, just not with the same roll to roll consistency.
...
My impression is that the more modern films don't suffer as much from storage variation as the older ones do, but I've never done the sort of work where high levels of consistency are critical.

Click to expand...

Matt, I have a great deal of experience in that sort of thing, and from my experience you are being overly conservative. I don't recall exactly how much film we ran, but it was on the order of miles per day, and printed work was drastically more, easily enough to cave in the roof of a house. We used almost exclusively kodak professional color neg - CPS, VPSII, VPSIII, and Portra 160.

We once got caught with some sort of problem that took a lot of reprinting, and after that we set up a program to screen all of the new emulsions sensitometrically. They virtually never changed (with a few exceptions). But I mention this because it means that we knew what the emulsion looked like when it was new.

Now, in our studio chain, including a traveling "road" operation, we were always getting film back that someone had "found" in the back of a cabinet or in the trunk of a car they were taking over, etc. Because of the unknown storage history, they were instructed not to use it. In our main office we'd pull off a foot or two and print some sensi wedges for an abbreviated screening (similar to what a control strip plot does). Most of the film had presumably been stored in conditions of a typical retail store (in the U.S.), but who knows for sure? Almost always, it was a virtual match for the new sample of the same emulsion. This pattern continued, even when the film was a year or two past the expiration date. And definitely, no one was refrigerating those films.

I should point out that there was some slight fluctuation in these test "plots" but it was within a normal statistical control range. I'm doubtful that regular photographers would have a stable enough process to even be able to detect the occasional emulsion "signatures" that we saw. Certainly these would not have shown on printed work.

I have previously posted results of a "heat stress" test we had done where we ran VPSIII at an elevated temperature for weeks, and then exposed sensi wedges on it. We also ran a couple of amateur films to see how much better they would be than the "delicate" pro films. And we were surprised that VPSIII was significantly more rugged than the amateur films. So a great deal of what we previously had believed about pro vs amateur films was wrong.

Now, if I was planning to use a film 5 years or so out of date, I'd refrigerate or freeze it, but for normal time ranges with the specific films we tested, no - no special storage. Any other brands, sorry, can't say for sure.