Kodak Gold 100 C-41 development failure

AnselMortensen said:

Is it possible that a curious person found the film, and pulled it out of the cassette hoping to see photos, then rewound it back into the cassette?

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In that case, the last bit of film that stays in the cassette would have been unaffected. Apparently, that was also fogged. Otherwise this would indeed have been a plausible scenario.

AnselMortensen said:

There is a story about a courier opening up some of Playboy's 8x10 film holders on the way to a photo lab "because nekkid wimmen".

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Imagine the look on the art director's face when they got to see the developed slides and they saw the face of that courier staring at them with a curious expression!
Ok, ok, I'll shuffle off into a corner now.

koraks said:

IDK, could be. What is certain is that it was an oddball film and that sales figures just didn't justify its uniqueness - i.e. too costly and cumbersome to keep alive. I figure that the 25 speed also put many people off; the film was introduced in the late 1980s and by the early 90's, performance on higher-speed films increased so much in terms of grain, sharpness etc. that people would probably have struggled to see the point of having a 25-speed film.
There's an interesting thread (actually, several) on it on photo.net; e.g. here: https://www.photo.net/forums/topic/172826-kodak-ektar-25-what-was-it-designed-for/
Note this quote from Joe Manthey, who was on the design team of this film (whom I also referred to above):


What makes me somewhat hesitant about the supposed poor storage claim is that over the years, people have shot and exposed 15-, 20- and 30-year old Ektar and they consistently report surprisingly good results. Use your favorite search engine to find some of those posts and photos, including also here on Photrio.

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I recently exposed (at varying EI) and had processed a roll of Royal Gold 25 (Ektar 25), expiration 1995, that had been kept at room temperature as the OP described. I got essentially the same result as he. I can guarantee that the film at manufacture date was not defective. So it would seem that -- as koraks suggested -- some or all unexposed color films are not designed to work well after decades of room temperature storage.

On another note and @MattKing, I want to correct (again) the conclusion from an off-handed remark made by Ron Mowrey about Ektar keeping. Ron was not directly involved with Ektar design and production, so I suspect he repeated some hearsay about Ektar 25 keeping, and that hearsay eventually got expanded to Ektar in general. The problem was restricted to Ektar 25 and had to do with an unexpected physical issue if unexposed film was frozen, i.e., it was not what we usually think of when we say "keeping". The problem was quickly corrected as soon as it was identified. Koraks explained why Ektar 25 was discontinued. It's perhaps time to put this one to rest.

@jmrochester thanks for adding your experience and insight, and my apologies for not thinking to tag you into the thread. Your viewpoint is very much appreciated!

koraks said:

What makes me somewhat hesitant about the supposed poor storage claim is that over the years, people have shot and exposed 15-, 20- and 30-year old Ektar and they consistently report surprisingly good results. Use your favorite search engine to find some of those posts and photos, including also here on Photrio.

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I expect Ron Mowrey's "not acceptable" might have been founded on somewhat different criteria than a lot of end users - including criteria that would have mattered more to the commercial photofinishing industry than today's "I'll develop my film at home and then scan it" crowd.

The journey continues:

* 35mm Kodak Portra 160 from 2009, shot 2025, looks just lovely
* 120 Ektar 100 from 2009, shot 2025, looks washed out and lost detail
* 120 Fujicolor Pro 800Z from 2009, shot 2009, is very badly fogged but frames are visible

Color film sure doesn't seem to like aging.

MattKing said:

I expect Ron Mowrey's "not acceptable" might have been founded on somewhat different criteria than a lot of end users

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Sorry Matt, I find it hard to believe that we have a CN film that arguably does better than anything else over a timespan of 30 years in amateur hands, but would supposedly have deteriorated too fast in pro hands when it was still fresh. Also, I would have expected Joe who (1) co-engineered the film and (2) apparently shot miles of it wouldn't have mentioned it as the reason for discontinuation. There's one or two threads on Photo.net where people post examples of 10+ year old Ektar 25 freshly processed with good results and where Joe posted; if storage problems would have been known in the day, I would at least have expected Joe to say something like "gee, we never figured back then that it would actually do so well."

More so, we have a much more specific, concrete and plausible explanation provided above by @jmrochester

The plausible explanation IMO is that this is just one of those rare occasions where Ron wasn't 100% correct and misremembered.

I think that as @jmrochester perhaps we should put this one to rest and all stand corrected on the basis of comments of those who evidently knew what was going on.

FWIW, I have no doubt that sales figures determined the discontinuation issue - they almost always do.
This is the sort of Photo Engineer post that I recalled: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...r-are-not-archival.148594/page-2#post-1945488
And I see in the wording used there that @jmrochester and Ron may actually be closer to being ad idem on the issue .
Speaking generally though, I think that anytime one reads posts about these sorts of issues from people like Ron or @jmrochester or a couple of others I'm aware of here on Photrio, it behooves one to remember that sometimes they might be referring to issues that would have more impact in the world of high volume commercial photofinishing than in the hobbyist world most of us inhabit around here.
Our various discussions about colour crossover provide ample evidence of that!

Koraks asked me to chime in on this thread. Relative to the design of Gold 100, the latent image electron/photon traps are strong enough for the film to not go totally black over that time period, so I can't fault the film itself. The tape that holds the film to the core would have to have passed the rigid photoactivity testing to prevent such issues, too. As for fogging of the roll inside the manufacturing operations, there are no lights or LED's within the spooler that could have fogged a roll deemed "good" for sale, and any mechanical intervention for maintenance or supply changes (large rolls of unspooled film or changing a new roll of the film to core tape) would trigger the spooler to change the delivery path of any spools within the process to a waste bin rather than through the exit tube where they are sent for boxing.

I'd wager that the roll was at sometime opened and pulled out and then rewound. I actually did this back around fifteen years ago with a roll of Tri-X that I had received and used to check the winding of my replacement AE-1 and rewound but failed to mark as fogged. I spent a good amount of time in a cemertery capturing pix of lovely grave statues only to hear back from the processor that the roll was black.

FredK said:

I'd wager that the roll was at sometime opened and pulled out and then rewound.

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It's so absurdly unlikely in my setup, I can't even begin to explain how that would happen. But I suppose nothing is ever completely impossible. Maybe somebody gifted me a single roll of badly-abused Gold 100 at some point and I forgot all about it.

Still, I'm not sure that it explains the even fogging right up to the spool. I would think the light trap would keep the last 2-3cm fully unexposed even if completely unspooled.

edit: excuse the awful snapshot, but just showing that I cut right at the tape. It's the same, even, dark brown throughout, including under the tape, which should have been perfectly protected even if somebody was mechanically screwing around with it.

mrmekon said:

Still, I'm not sure that it explains the even fogging right up to the spool.

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It doesn't. I don't know what happened to your roll, but I think what to take from @FredK's post is that the odds that it happened at Kodak are next to zero. This roll left the factory in good condition, and somewhere along the road it became fogged. If we'll ever find out how - I doubt it. I do hope that it's the last unsolvable puzzle along these lines that finds its way into your hands!

koraks said:

but I think what to take from @FredK's post is that the odds that it happened at Kodak are next to zero

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Certainly agreed, the chances that it was bad at the time of manufacture is probably even lower than the chance that somebody popped this cassette open and then recrimped it

If you really processed several films together and the problem appears in only one of them, I would rule out the chemistry, and possibly the loading onto the reels as well, assuming this was done consecutively, without any "breaks." Complete fogging of film due to age and background/X-ray radiation is extremely rare - I’ve recovered images from latent images nearly 70 years old. Even when there is very massive fog, it is usually not completely opaque, and in most cases some traces of an image can still be seen. And in this case, we’re not even talking about films that old.
I agree that accidental light leaks of 135-format film wouldn’t make it 100% black either - if the camera back is opened while the film is inside, usually only the outer layers are ruined, while the inner ones survive. Also, the portion wound back into the cassette would show a different tone. My only assumption is that this is a case of thermal shock - I’ve seen films that were truly completely destroyed after being exposed to heat for a long time. Typically, the fogging starts at both ends, near the perforations, and moves toward the center until it eventually covers the entire film. The effect of heat fogging also seems to differ between different films.