Old Delta 3200 issues

[Snowfire]

I recently shot a roll of Delta 3200 (exp. 2009 but kept in freezer) on an old camera with which I am not yet familiar. I processed it at box speed in Microphen (9 min. full strength at 20C, motorized agitation.) It came out a bit gnarly--there is what looks like some of the worst base fog I have seen in a long while, and the images are distinctly on the faint side, even allowing for the base fog. Two other rolls of film were in the same developing batch (including a 35mm non-expired Delta 3200 roll) and they came out looking reasonably normal, so I don't think my darkroom technique is to blame. I wondered if it might be a light leak in the camera, but in my experience light leaks show variation--streaks, blotches, gradients, repeating patterns. This is more like a perfectly even, uniform fogging over the entire roll. I guess this film has some serious age issues? I have processed much more severely expired films (including some Konica IR from 1993) and not seen base fog this bad, so I wonder.

I don't want to just toss this film in the wastebasket, as I have about 9 rolls left. What to do, assuming it is the film? I am thinking about pulling the processing to ISO 800 and then shooting the film at ISO 200 to see if that improves things. Is this a rational strategy, or are there other tricks I am missing?

 

[grain elevator]

The 3200 films are known to age badly. Maybe exposing more and bleaching a bit will help; I doubt benzotriazole would cut it but I could be wrong.

 

[pentaxuser]

Put the remaining 9 in a bag and then without looking move them around and pick on one. Shoot say 10 scenes with it that do not matter then remove that length of exposed film and develop. If it turns out the same way as the problem film there may be a good chance that all 9 are the same so you then have a decision to make.

You haven't said what speed you expose but if the speed is 3200 or even 1600 you might then try 800 i.e. expose the rest of the film one stop or one and a half stops down and see if that improves matters.

Only you know how much trouble you want to go to in order to see if there is a way of getting an acceptable result

PS showing the problem negs might help us to help you

pentaxuser

 

[grain elevator]

Put the remaining 9 in a bag and then without looking move them around and pick on one.

Don't forget to sprinkle with blood of a black cat and throw in a virgin's hair! Seriously, a pointless ritual, there's nothing to randomise if there are no criteria to select by in the first place, and a sample of 1 remains a sample of 1.

 

[Snowfire]

I don't have a proper scan of the roll (and am uncertain whether I will bother) but I do have this index frame. It was shot on a cheap light box with uneven illumination and gives the impression of more variation in quality than there actually is (contrast was boosted in Photoshop a bit.) It is a bit difficult to judge image quality from this, but...

This image was meant only as an inventory of content, not a record of quality.

 

[pentaxuser]

Snowfire, grain elevator is right of course there is no way to extrapolate anything from one film in terms of the quality of the others. It is just that the black bag ritual always made me feel better, especially if it was midnight on Walpurgis Nacht and my black cat was in attendance.

Take one pic with all 9 and develop to see how many are OK. The presenter of the site called Shootfilmlikeaboss uses black plastic 35mm film cassette holders for just this sort of purpose.

On the other hand, given what you have now shown us it may not be worth the trouble

pentaxuser

 

[Snowfire]

I have recently come across a post on diyphotography.net by a guy who has developed a protocol for rescuing some very far-gone film, much worse even than this even if you believe him. The most troublesome part is the need to keep the developer cold (50F.)

https://www.diyphotography.net/how-i-removed-base-fog-from-old-film-stocks/

If I could find an easy way to do that, the rest does not really sound hard. Perhaps I should look into something like that.

I am trying to shoot out a lot of my expired film lately to whittle my inventory down. Of interest will be a bulk roll of Technical Pan from decades ago--I wonder what I will find there. I recently shot a fairly old roll of Tmax !00 and it was just fine, so one never knows; even a roll of Konica IR750 from 1993 that was never refrigerated turned out surprisingly well, even retaining full IR sensitivity, albeit with light-to-moderate base fog.

 

[john_s]

The "3200" speed films are different in that they deteriorate much faster than other films. They aren't really that fast even when new, more like 1000.

 

[pentaxuser]

I have recently come across a post on diyphotography.net by a guy who has developed a protocol for rescuing some very far-gone film, much worse even than this even if you believe him. The most troublesome part is the need to keep the developer cold (50F.)

https://www.diyphotography.net/how-i-removed-base-fog-from-old-film-stocks/

.

The very cold developer strategy is one that has been mentioned here on Photrio on a couple of occasions but my impression was that a deal of scepticism was expressed about the ability of most if not all developers being able to function at 50F. Not a problem in the U.K. for a lot of the year - just load the film and process outside. If it does work, I'd have thought that cooled water from a fridge and a cooled water bath for the tank might work for long enough to maintain 50F

I'd love to know if it works

pentaxuser

 

[DREW WILEY]

High speed films are affected by cosmic rays, ambient radiation, etc - things that freezing can't protect against. Old high-speed film is almost never reliable.

 

[removed account4]

you might consider looking for DEKTOL print developer and process your film FULL STRENGTH DEVELOPER unagitated for 3 minutes
it is an old newspaper photographer trick people used to do, if you are queasy about that. dilute it 1:6 and process it for 6 minutes, ALSO
shoot it at with at least 1 stop extra light.
I shoot expired film mostly ( for 20 + years ) and those are 2 things that might help you...
you could always sell the film cheap to people like me

also. ... you might consider using a camera whose shutter and light seals &c you know are up to snuff
its sometimes hard to figure stuff out that when wrong with lots of variables that could go wrong in the mix