HC-110 at 40F? (for old film)

I have an old roll of film that a friend has given me to process. Found in a Brownie, it's Verichrome Pan 620 in the red and yellow paper. I bought HC-110 for the occasion (also finding it to be convenient for 4x5 sheet film, one shot). I've read more than one recommendation to process old film at cold temperatures -- below 50F -- and compensate, of course, by extending the development time. This gentleman suggests a room light clip test, and picking a time where the development goes almost (but not completely) black. He's developing at ~44F.
http://foundfilm.livejournal.com/12334.html

I'm getting differing opinions about developing at such cool temperatures -- some saying it's good for controlling fog, others saying the developer becomes inactive below a certain temperature. Thoughts?

You have just one roll and you are going to use a process and temperature you have never used before? Just process it as you would any other roll. You will be lucky if it shows anything.

I'm not an expert, but I recently developed the same type of film (with the same backing paper) also from an old box camera (either an old Ernamann or a Brownie). I used HC-110 dilution H at 68°F, I don't remember the time I used, but it was in the neighborhood of 14 minutes. Looked to me like the camera user had troubles with the camera, as there were multiple exposures, and only 4 images. The first two looked very similar to the results in your link, but were pretty thin. My guess on my film is that it was shot in the 40's or 50's.

Here's 2 of the 4 that came out 'the best';

I am unaware of any real scientific investigation that determined that temperatures in the range listed have any advantage in the recovery of images from old film. If someone knows of such work please specify the links. Otherwise the link given is pure speculation.

Gerald C Koch said:

I am unaware of any real scientific investigation that determined that temperatures in the range listed have any advantage in the recovery of images from old film. If someone knows of such work please specify the links. Otherwise the link given is pure speculation.

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Right. Anything in the 40's seems extreme, and I was wondering if there was any strong evidence to back that up.

ic-racer said:

You have just one roll and you are going to use a process and temperature you have never used before? Just process it as you would any other roll. You will be lucky if it shows anything.

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Just now catching up. Why should I be lucky if anything at all shows up? The film stayed in the camera and wasn't exposed to the elements...

I've been using the low-temperature approach with found film for a couple years now, and with pretty good success too. For me it is usually HC-110, dilution A or else a 10% dilution, and 40F (or at least I THINK that is the temperature I am settling on). Unfortunately like Gerald said, I haven't seen anything confirming a scientific basis for the low temperature = reduced fog idea. But I too really wish we could find out for sure - if the same results can be had at room temperature then it certainly would make the process more convenient! I did come across one reference in a forum somewhere where a person was claiming to have seen something in an old Kodak reference that supported the idea, but I can't confirm the source. Maybe if I can remember where I read that statement and track it down, I will ping the person who made it and ask if he can provide more information.

Anyway, the one thing I AM sure of is that HC-110 does NOT become inactive at 40F as some have claimed. At least not for me anyway, and at least not in the sense of its activity completely falling off a cliff at that temperature. You definitely can develop at those temperatures.

As for your particular roll of film, the good news is that Verichrome Pan tends be one of the most reliable emulsions among found film, and I would say chances are very good you will get images from it. So don't be dissuaded from developing it! Interestingly enough, my "failed" developments of found film tend to consist of NO images being seen on the film at all, as opposed to images that are merely degraded. I can imagine lots of different causes for this, including cases where the roll was never actually exposed in the first place, fogging from being improperly loaded/unloaded into the camera (or subsequently mishandled for isolated rolls not found in a camera), mistakenly using "B" mode instead of "I" on the camera, from other camera problems like a shutter that sticks open or doesn't open at all, from leaving the lens cap on... so many ways to screw up a roll (as true today as it was then)!

Here is a sample from a roll of Verichrome Pan found in an Imperial Reflex 620. Based on my clip test with HC-110(A) at 40F, I chose 9min 15sec for the development. Interestingly enough, if you compensate for dilution and temperature you actually come up with pretty much the same development Kodak gave for this combination originally - 6min at 65F with dilution B.

Denverdad said:

Anyway, the one thing I AM sure of is that HC-110 does NOT become inactive at 40F as some have claimed. At least not for me anyway, and at least not in the sense of its activity completely falling off a cliff at that temperature. You definitely can develop at those temperatures.

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Low temperature developers have been used for decades. Some formulas even contain a glycol to prevent freezing. However no one has yet proven that this technique provides any advantage over normal temperatures. Indeed, no one provided a rationale for this concept. It remains only conjecture as to whether the process is better in reclaiming photos from old film. Somewhat similar to saying "It is well known that the beating of drums brings back the sun after an eclipse."

Bvy, did you ever get this roll developed? I am very curious to see how it comes out.

In the meantime, I think I found the online reference that first turned me onto the idea of developing at colder temperatures: http://silverbased.org/dev-old-vp/. Apparently the author of the site ("Vox") got the idea from information in C.E.K. Mees’ 1942 text, The Theory of the Photographic Process. He writes, "But I discovered one intriguing table on pg. 455. This listed the ratio of image density to fog density, for various developing agents used at different temperatures. What leapt off the page was that for certain developers, the image-to-fog ratio was twice as good at 15° C as at 25° C." Researching this further, it turns out that there is an online text of The Theory of the Photographic Process available free of charge! If anyone would care to have a look at this and digest it, I would be interested to hear whether you agree with Vox's conclusion. HC-110 is supposed to be a phenidone-hydroquinone developer if that helps.

Jeff

Denverdad said:

Here is a sample from a roll of Verichrome Pan found in an Imperial Reflex 620. Based on my clip test with HC-110(A) at 40F, I chose 9min 15sec for the development. Interestingly enough, if you compensate for dilution and temperature you actually come up with pretty much the same development Kodak gave for this combination originally - 6min at 65F with dilution B.

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I tried to look at two tables on development time compensation,( Ralph Lambrecht's and Ilford) and neither go any near as low as 40F but the Ilford one does go to 56F and the difference is about double the development time but your compensation for HC110 is not much more than 50%.

As Ilford doesn't bother with temperatures below 56F I'd assume rightly or maybe wrongly that Ilford's developers do not work well, if at all, at 40F.

Clearly there is something different about HC110 in terms of time adjustment for lower temperatures and maybe something different that enables it to work at these incredibly low temperatures.

I wonder what this "something different" is?

pentaxuser

Denverdad said:

Bvy, did you ever get this roll developed? I am very curious to see how it comes out.

In the meantime, I think I found the online reference that first turned me onto the idea of developing at colder temperatures: http://silverbased.org/dev-old-vp/. Apparently the author of the site ("Vox") got the idea from information in C.E.K. Mees’ 1942 text, The Theory of the Photographic Process. He writes, "But I discovered one intriguing table on pg. 455. This listed the ratio of image density to fog density, for various developing agents used at different temperatures. What leapt off the page was that for certain developers, the image-to-fog ratio was twice as good at 15° C as at 25° C." Researching this further, it turns out that there is an online text of The Theory of the Photographic Process available free of charge! If anyone would care to have a look at this and digest it, I would be interested to hear whether you agree with Vox's conclusion. HC-110 is supposed to be a phenidone-hydroquinone developer if that helps.

Jeff

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Well if I read that correctly, it looks like what you want is p-Aminophenol, not HC-110!

Duncan

For better or worse my calculation for the difference in development times between 40F and 65F was based on the mathematical relationship found on this site (see about 2/3 down the page where it says Adjusting Development Time for Different Temperatures). As it says on that website, the relationship is based on Kodak data over a much more limited temperature range and should be considered valid for small temperature corrections. So yes, I am extrapolating heavily! At the very least though, development does occur at that temperature, and I found it interesting that the relationship at least seemed to work well in this case - i.e., the time I determined from my clip test was very similar to the published time, after compensating for the different temperature (using the above relationship) and dilution (using the usual inverse relationship between time and concentration).

Edit: Pentaxuser, I just realized that I didn't directly answer your comment about my time not being at least double at this lower temperature. The last sentence sort of addresses it: it wasn't just the temperature that was different; I used a different dilution too - much more concentrated in fact, so as to compensate for what would otherwise have been a very long development time.

pentaxuser said:

I tried to look at two tables on development time compensation,( Ralph Lambrecht's and Ilford) and neither go any near as low as 40F but the Ilford one does go to 56F and the difference is about double the development time but your compensation for HC110 is not much more than 50%.

As Ilford doesn't bother with temperatures below 56F I'd assume rightly or maybe wrongly that Ilford's developers do not work well, if at all, at 40F.

Clearly there is something different about HC110 in terms of time adjustment for lower temperatures and maybe something different that enables it to work at these incredibly low temperatures.

I wonder what this "something different" is?

pentaxuser

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Maybe so!

If I get ambitious I might try to put together a simple test to compare fog levels at normal and reduced temperature with HC-110, and see if there really is a difference. Unfortunately, any HC-110 testing has to be on hold for at least another week or so, because last night I used up my remaining supply of the yellow syrup.

frobozz said:

Well if I read that correctly, it looks like what you want is p-Aminophenol, not HC-110!

Duncan

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Hey, Denverdad. You might just get to your fog test before I have a chance to develop that film! If you do, please post your findings here. My darkroom (i.e. repurposed basement bathroom) has been ground zero for a sewer backup and mold remediation over the past few weeks, and I haven't gotten everything moved back in yet. Also, I've been distracted with Polaroid 8x10 stuff. Anyway, I was happy to see some published evidence for low temperature development as a means to control fogging -- even if a lot of the chemistry was over my head. So thanks for posting it.

Thanks for the link to Covington and HC110. I can see how you arrived at 6 mins for Verichrome with dilution B and a temp change of 3 F from the 68F of 5 mins as in the table. However on a percentage basis this represents a 20% increase in time for a 3 degree drop from 68F to 65F.

Wouldn't that mean that a 28 degree drop from 68F to 40F is a 20% drop times 8.5 based on there being 8.5 stages of 3 degree drops from 68 to 40. That's about 170% more development time which is about 13.5 mins and not 9.25 mins. This assumes that there are no flaws in my maths above, of course

So if 9.25 mins is correct and it clearly is based on the evidence you have provided, namely the photograph, it indicates that as you go lower in temp there is not a linear relationship governing the required increase in time.

If you are able to put together a test for comparing fog levels then depending on the results a table to show the correct increase in time for 40F might be very useful for others or not as the case may be, if there is in fact little change to fog levels

Thanks for your help. I wish you well in any test you are able to carry out

pentaxuser

That's basically right - the relationship on that site (the one I was calculating from) is NOT linear, but rather exponential! To quote:

I was going to show what that function looks like over a broad range of temperatures just for reference, but plotting it out just now I discovered that it actually isn't an especially good a fit to the Kodak numbers! The optimum fit gives an exponent value more like -0.058 rather than -0.045, which has me wondering if the quoted relationship is some compromise to give a better overall fit for multiple films. Not surprisingly though, using the better fit results in a significant change in predicted development time when you get all the way down to 40F. Ah, such are the perils of extrapolation! In any event, I wouldn't put too much stock in any of this curve fitting. It is after all just an attempt to estimate development times at these extremes, or in my case to hopefully provide corroboration for my clip test results. But ultimately I put a lot more stock into the empirical results and the clip test is what guides me for the actual development time.

I would like to point out a few things.

The information cited in Mees mentions a temperature of 59F when converted. It says nothing of developing at 40F. At the time it was known that different developing agents produce different amounts of fog.

The information is based on emulsions in existence before 1940. It also cannot refer to HC-110 which hadn't yet been invented. One cannot assume that the information would still apply to emulsions from the 1950's or later. There are have been warnings on APUG about relying on the technical data in old photobooks. In the case of Mees the data is more than 75 years old!

Sorry but the premise mentioned in the article cited in the OP remains conjecture. There still remains no scientific evidence that development at low temperatures produces any better results than normal development. One would have to cut a roll in half and develop each at different temperatures. Then use a densitometer to measure the fog levels.

BTW, the rule is that the rate of any chemical reaction doubles for each 10C increase in temperature or halves for a 10C decrease.

Gerald, thanks for the feedback. I am not at all what you would call "well-versed" in photo-chemical processes, so input from knowledgeable folks such as yourself is much appreciated! Your caution about not relying on old technical data like this is well taken, and I would agree with you that that based on the referenced book alone, the claim that fog can be reduced through low-temperature/high-concentration development using HC-110 remains conjecture. Just to be clear though, I am not the one making the claim. Rather, I am just trying to track down whether there is any scientific basis for it, and so reporting the few things I have been able to find, for discussion.

This morning, I managed to dig up some discussions about this topic dating back as far as 2001 - probably the oldest reference I am likely to find online for it. According to several items referenced in these "Old film processing" threads, Greg Miller of Filmrescue indicates that their process for developing old film was fine tuned after much experimentation involving low temperatures. For example, he says:
Searching that link for "low temperature" or something similar will turn up several other discussions, some containing more detail about specific testing and temperatures used. So it would seem that Filmrescue at least has some empirical evidence supporting the concept. Granted, that isn't the same as scientific validation (presumably they haven't published their results?), but I do wonder if that is at least where the idea started. Has anyone turned up anything earlier?

In any event, I would still like to verify for myself experimentally whether an improvement can be had with HC-110 using these methods, so I hope I will get the chance to do so one of these days.

Jeff

Gerald C Koch said:

I would like to point out a few things.

The information cited in Mees mentions a temperature of 59F when converted. It says nothing of developing at 40F. At the time it was known that different developing agents produce different amounts of fog.

The information is based on emulsions in existence before 1940. It also cannot refer to HC-110 which hadn't yet been invented. One cannot assume that the information would still apply to emulsions from the 1950's or later. There are have been warnings on APUG about relying on the technical data in old photobooks. In the case of Mees the data is more than 75 years old!

Sorry but the premise mentioned in the article cited in the OP remains conjecture. There still remains no scientific evidence that development at low temperatures produces any better results than normal development. One would have to cut a roll in half and develop each at different temperatures. Then use a densitometer to measure the fog levels.

BTW, the rule is that the rate of any chemical reaction doubles for each 10C increase in temperature or halves for a 10C decrease.

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DD, did you see the link in my OP? The blogger/photographer there shows results with HC-110 at 44F.

http://foundfilm.livejournal.com/12334.html

I have still not seen any data from controlled experiments of normal versus low temperature development in salvaging old films. Until then I remain very skeptical. Sorry but that's how the scientific method works and I am sure that the members of AUG would prefer for things to be kept on a scientific foundation rather than on guess-work.

Yes, that's another one I'm pretty sure I read prior to going down the reduced temperature path. Actually I run into his articles fairly regularly whenever the subject of old film development comes up, especially the clip test description he has on that page. Come to think of it, that's probably what turned me onto the whole idea of running a clip test in the first place. I only wish I was having as good fortune with old Verichrome (not pan) film - for some reason my last 3 Verichrome developments were a complete bust - no images at all. Oh well, my Verichrome Pan development a couple days ago pretty much makes up for it.

By the way, I feel for you regarding the basement job. A little over a year ago we ended up with water damage in our basement following the floods here in Colorado, and that pretty much put all fun stuff (including film development) on hold for many months.

bvy said:

DD, did you see the link in my OP? The blogger/photographer there shows results with HC-110 at 44F.

http://foundfilm.livejournal.com/12334.html

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A friend of mine has some old film he wants developed, I was first thinking of developing by Infrared Inspection in a two-bath process: D-76 with Benzotriazole to see what appears in the first few minutes, then to straight D-76 if it looks like the film could tolerate unrestrained development.

Has anyone else done old found film development by inspection, and choosing different baths as needed?

It seems to me the author of the foundfilm article might have chosen low temperature development by experience... wanting to have reasonable development times using highly active developers. By luck or experience, that author may have found the effect that Ansel Adams described in The Print, that below 55-degrees F, a Metol-Hydroquinone [print] developer acts as if it were mostly a Metol developer.

It might be as well to formulate a developer without Hydroquinone and develop at normal temperatures, as Gerald C Koch points out that low temperatures are not normally required for film development.

So,bvy, what did you decide to do in terms of time and developer and what happened when you came to develop the film in the months that have ensued since your last post on the subject?

Thanks

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

So,bvy, what did you decide to do in terms of time and developer and what happened when you came to develop the film in the months that have ensued since your last post on the subject?

Thanks

pentaxuser

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I've done nothing yet. I've just been too busy. I was entertaining the idea of the new R3 Monobath, as that was being touted as working well with old films. But now I think I might stick to tried and true HC-110. I guess the next step is a clip test...