How long can paper last?

[waynecrider]

I did some traditional contact prints last night on some paper I've had for a very long time, maybe 3-4 years and never cold stored. I was kinda surprised that the pictures came looking very nice with good depth. How long can paper last and what happens when it goes bad?

 

[PHOTOTONE]

I have some photo paper that is 25 years old, and it still works ok for me. It was stored at room temperature in a cabineet. (air conditioned building)

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

It depends on the paper and storage conditions. Old paper gets foggy.

Slow contact papers last longer than faster enlarging papers. Developer incorporated papers don't last particularly long.

 

[David H. Bebbington]

The oldest paper I ever used (in 1969) was a box of Kodak double-weight glossy grade 4 made in 1942 and stored in a cupboard at room temperature. It was fine and only a little down on contrast. On the other hand, I have tried to use VC paper, particularly Kodak Polymax but also Agfa, which was 6 or 8 years old and found the low-contrast (yellow-filter-sensitive) emulsion had died and the paper was very slow and would only make high-contrast prints. Ilford Multigrade has been much better in this respect. Short answers to your questions:
1) A surprisingly long time (but see above).
2) Depends very much on type, but when paper does go bad, you will see veiled highlights, poor maximum black and even patchiness in the blacks. Many amateur photographers in the UK just after WWII (including me) began by using military surplus paper, which never seemed to give good contrast and which was so prone to chemical fog that Johnson's of Hendon made a special developer additive ("142" restrainer) to improve the paper's image quality!

Regards,

David

 

[Ole]

Some of my paper is at least 20 years old, and still works fine.

Agfa and Kodak papers don't seem to last as long as Ilford and Fotokemika papers...

 

[PHOTOTONE]

A lot of old paper that has a "bit" of fog can be ressurected by the addition of Benzotriazole (Anti-Fog) to the developer. A good brand of premix for this is Ethol Liquid Orthazite. You add a little at a time just until the base fog ceases to present itself.

 

[Rob Archer]

I was given a couple of boxes of Agfa Record Rapid which, from the packaging I reckon dates from the 1970s. It's still great - particularly in Ilford Cooltone dev. It starts to show a bit of fog in Fotospeed WT10, though. It was stored with a load of Kodak papers in a garage. The Kodak is badly fogged but most of the Agfa is fine.

I'll ost one in the Gallery

Rob

 

[3Dfan]

I do believe that M&P recently printed on 1920's era Azo with no problems.

 

[waynecrider]

I checked the records on the paper I used and it was purchased in Oct 2000. It is Adorama's Variable Grade RC Pearl. The other that I have which I have yet to print on is Polymax II RC Glossy which is just short of 5 years old.

 

[PHOTOTONE]

I checked the records on the paper I used and it was purchased in Oct 2000. It is Adorama's Variable Grade RC Pearl. The other that I have which I have yet to print on is Polymax II RC Glossy which is just short of 5 years old.

Oh man, you have baby fresh paper!!

 

[Oren Grad]

I've never had Ilford paper go bad, even after 10 years. Occasionally a pack of some other brand has gone south after it's been sitting for a few years - off the top of my head, I can recall tossing bad Kodak Polymax, Agfa Insignia, and Zone VI Brilliant (the original Guillemenot Boespflug version).

 

[Cor]

I've never had Ilford paper go bad, even after 10 years. Occasionally a pack of some other brand has gone south after it's been sitting for a few years - off the top of my head, I can recall tossing bad Kodak Polymax, Agfa Insignia, and Zone VI Brilliant (the original Guillemenot Boespflug version).

Perhaps Ilford paper does not get realy bad, but I do notice a difference between paper (Ilford MGIV RC) from the same box: I freeze all my paper upon arrival, and I take out small batches for use, so after thawing the "fresh" box, prints made on this paper are just a tad brigther than prints from the same paper, say stored for 6 months at room temp. The difference is only seen when compairing the border of those 2 prins directly..

AGFA paper of "medium" age (say 2-5, room temperature) years old are much worse than Ilford though..

Best,

Cor

 

[PhotoJim]

I always write the date when I buy paper on the package in the top right corner... otherwise it's really easy to forget how old paper is.