How long can you store film in a deep freeze

[ssloansjca]

I store my film in my deep freeze. Some of it is out of date. How long should it be good? I have Kodachrome 40 and various E6 as well as black and white films. Some may be 5 to 10 years out of date.

Steve

 

[Kevin Caulfield]

If it has been kept cold for most of its life, then most of the black and white should be pretty fine, but the Kodachrome and E6 may show some colour changes. Five years old may be okay, but ten may be not so good.

 

[cotdt]

depends on the ISO. there will always be cosmic radiation

 

[ssloansjca]

Would storing film in lead foil film-shield bags help?

Most of the film is ISO 125 or less, the oddest is some 4x5 super panchro press. The saddest is a bunch of 120 kodachrome. I cannot get that processed anymore.

~Steve

 

[Ed Matthew]

I will add my own question here - I have several rolls of Konica 750 'near infrared' that has been frozen since 1998 (expiration date 1999). What are the chances it is still good?

Thanks,
Ed

 

[Neanderman]

Would storing film in lead foil film-shield bags help?

It might help a little, depending upon the amount of background radiation in your area. But the ultimate long term enemy of film is cosmic rays. They can penetrate anything, incuding the earth. So, after a period of time, it inevitable that enough of them will have sticken your film to fog it.

Kodachrome 120 is a total bummer. PE says you can do it yourself, but it would be a chore.

Ed

 

[Photo Engineer]

I suggest a search of APUG. This topic has been done over and over and over.

However, to summarize, the faster the film, the worse it keeps under any condition and IR films keep the worst of any film made.

PE

 

[PhotoJim]

Lead won't stop cosmic radiation, unless it's a few metres thick.

Cosmic radiation will indeed deteriorate your film. As Photo Engineer said, the faster the film, the more it deteriorates. 400 speed film may only keep a few years at most. Slow films may keep for many years or even decades.

 

[cotdt]

i have some really ancient TechPan film that still works marvelously

 

[B&Wpositive]

Let's say someone had a 1000 speed film the 1990s that was stored frozen, and they wanted to take a risk and shoot it to get messed-up images (if anything at all comes out) for artistic effect.

With absolutely no worries as to whether there would be an image or not, at what speed would you rate a 15-yr-old film such as Royal Gold 1000? EI 200? EI 100? EI 50 even??? How does the degredation curve look as ISO value versus time increases?

 

[Photo Engineer]

I have 15 year old Royal X pan. I shoot it at the labeled speed. I use standard development. I get low contrast high fog images that are usable but not very nice. Nothing will really fix the fog and grain.

PE