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!