OK, film historians and/or Russian speakers, I've got something for you

[mrdarklight]

I ordered a Russian Moskva 4 on the eBay recently and it arrived today, from Lithuania (former Soviet republic). It is in fairly poor condition, but the interesting thing is, it has a roll of exposed film in it. How old is this film? I have no idea, the labels are in Russian and I don't read Russian. It looks old.

Here's a pic of the film:

So I guess I'm looking for the age first, and the chemistry, and then we can talk about whether it is developable or not.

 

[Photo Engineer]

What I can read of the top line looks like "nerova" but the rest is blocked by your fingers.

The green on green is not visible enough!

Sorry. Even if I could read it, I'm not good enough to translate it probably. It has been too long.

PE

 

[ndrs]

It's from Svema (on the green sticker), upper part must be 'ekspoNIROVAno' - exposed. Likely from eighties. Can't tell you more, sorry.

 

[georg16nik]

Thats Свема - Svema film.
"Svema" used to be the major photographic film manufacturer in the USSR, founded in 1931 in then Ukrainian SSR. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svema
On the green stripe it should say the sensitivity of the film, after the brand name.

Good luck,
Georg

 

[mrdarklight]

OK, it looks like you folks know about this, here are the other pics, which show the rest of the labels. Thanks in advance!

 

[georg16nik]

Yep, its written in the wiki page - You've got Svema FN 64 or 65 - ISO 80.
I used it quite a low, it holds well with age when stored properly. It curls and the base is VERY thick, so keep that in mind.
Last year I shot my last roll (Expired 1990)
http://www.digitaltruth.com/chart/search_text.php?Film=Svema

Good luck,
G

 

[mrdarklight]

Well Film Fans, no luck. I developed half of it in stock ID-11 for 4.5 min (7 min adjusted for temperature). All black. I did the second half at 1:1. Still all black.

I noticed just before I developed it that the bottom of the plastic real is broken on one side. There might have been a big light leak in there, I don't know. I'm tempted to believe not though, because the outside of the role was not exposed. You could see the line where the exposure started. It was just all black.

 

[mrdarklight]

Now that I've had time to think about it, I'm almost sure of what happened.

The only curious part of the roll is the very inside, the last 6 inches or so, were not exposed. Everything else was solid black. There's one good way to accomplish this: open the back with the camera in the middle of the film roll.

If I had just overdeveloped it, there would be black frames but there would still be white borders, the space between the frames that was never exposed. This wasn't like that, it was all black.

So someone at some point opened up the back of this old camera and the film was still inside, most of it already taken. There might have been one frame left. In fact I would have done this myself if the film were still mounted (although I would have closed the camera and salvaged the rest of the film except maybe three frames). But maybe someone who didn't know about film did this and then proceeded to remove the film from the camera and wind it up on the takeup roll. This would expose everything except the last few inches of the roll, which were never unrolled.

 

[dehk]

Sad nothing turned out but still a good try!