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Ilfosol 3 shelf life

grat

Member
Joined
May 8, 2020
Messages
2,044
Location
Gainesville, FL
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Ilfosol 3 is notorious for it's poor shelf life. October 2020, I took an unopened bottle of Ilfosol 3 (500ml), and separated it into 5x 100ml brown glass bottles, full to the top of the neck. They've been sitting, unmolested, and unmoved, for the past 15 months.

This week, I bought a 2x3 Graflex SLR, which came with a grafmatic, and to my surprise (I always check in a dark tent), 6 sheets of what appeared to be Tri-X 400. After some consideration of how best to develop it, I went for 400 ISO. This was based on a friend's experiments with some 17 year old exposed Tri-X last year-- box speed produced usable results.

Regardless, not wanting to mix up a full batch of a different developer for a one-off experiment, I grabbed one of my two remaining Ilfosol 3 mini-bottles, and mixed up a 1+9 batch for developing these negatives.

The good news is, the sheets turned out nearly uniformly "dark". The bad news-- the same. Not only had they been exposed to light, they had apparently also been exposed to mold, based on the round blotches covering about 20% of each negative.

Absolutely no trace of an image to be seen. I don't think they were ever used to take photographs.
 
You can’t conclude anything about Ilfosol here because you know nothing about the history of the TriX sheets that came with the camera
 
I don't put my Ilfosol 3 in small glass bottles but leave it in the original plastic bottle. After each time I open it, I spray butane in it.
The longest I stretched it so far is 4 months. Now I have an bottle that is open for 4,5 months, I will see if it also still works.
 
I have been using Ilfosol 3 for many years and never had a problem with it.
Its predecessor Ilfosol S was the one with a short life.

I always decant into glass bottles and if not full, use butane gas to fill the void. I also have been known to just exhale through a straw into the bottle and before someone jumps in my neck, (I know all the details, thank you) it also worked.

I never had chemical failure with Ilfosol 3 and believe it to be a very good developer.

Your problem is with the film, not the chemical.
 
otto.f said:
You can’t conclude anything about Ilfosol here because you know nothing about the history of the TriX sheets that came with the camera
Click to expand...

I can conclude that after 15 months of being "properly" stored on a shelf, the ilfosol 3 was still the right color, and displayed a significant amount of development activity-- as opposed to the half-full bottle of Illfosol 3 that turned into something resembling flat coca-cola after 3 months. I'm not aware of any aging effect that would make the Tri-X develop *faster*-- slower, yes, but old film will not magically enhance old developer.

foc said:
Your problem is with the film, not the chemical.
Click to expand...

Problem? What problem? Mildly disappointed there was nothing on the film to develop, but pleased that my developer still worked over a year after opening the original bottle.

Perhaps my post wasn't clear.
 
otto.f said:
The question was: do you know what the former owner of the TriX sheets did with them, or do I just fail to understand your story
Click to expand...

Based on the uniform "dark" state of the negatives, I would assume they were loaded into the grafmatic, and never used. At some point, someone opened the grafmatic, exposing all the negatives to light. Now-- I admit, I have no idea if that would "drown out" any latent image, so maybe there were photos, maybe there weren't.

That's irrelevant, though. The point is that my developer was still good 15 months after I opened the original concentrate.

So-- what could have happened to these negatives that would allow them to develop with expired (ie, oxidized) developer? Obviously, you think something could have.
 
Exactly. And we cannot rule that out, so there’s no conclusion possible about Ilfosol
 
otto.f said:
Exactly. And we cannot rule that out, so there’s no conclusion possible about Ilfosol
Click to expand...

Please provide examples of what could have altered the film in such a way as to improve the performance of the ilfosol 3.

Your argument is making no sense, but perhaps you're aware of a film degradation process that I'm not.
 
I propose that we don't agree that we don't agree, but that we agree that we don't understand eachother
 
I'll agree on that. The only point of this thread was to comment that after over a year, the stored Ilfosol 3 is still active enough to fully develop a negative.
 
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