So after 18 or so years of not having a darkroom and only sporadically shooting film, I got a wild hair to do a full wet darkroom one more time ( first one was about 42 years ago ).
As I am getting ready to build this darkroom I took stock of what film I have and replenished some of it. My film has always been stored in a refrigerator and some of it is quite old.
Today I grabbed a 20 year old roll of E200 and loaded it in my RZ67. When I looked at my E6 chems, they were not in much better shape, about 5 years old and about 1/3 left. I had poured them all from their plastic bottles into dark brown glass bottles and always have purged with Argon after mixing ( one shot ). I was surprised that the first developer was not brown. The Color developer part A had particulates in it. I heated it up and they didn't quite all dissolve. I have had this problem is the past and would just swirl things up before measuring what I need. I have found that adding part B of the color developer makes what ever particulates there are finish dissolving and that's what happened this time.
I didn't shoot anything fancy, just stepped out my back door fully expecting this experiment in age was going to be a flop. I popped off my nine shots and went back in to process.
Much to my surprise, there be images on that roll.
And for the first time in 40+ years of doing this, I have a proper filter air dryer for my film. Has cut way down on my dust issue. Now it's just the dust I pick up going to the scanner.
Not much for subject matter, but here is a sample. No exposure compensation for age, no development time adjustments, no tweaks on the scanner, straight scan on my V700.
Guess I'll keep purging my chems with Argon.
As I am getting ready to build this darkroom I took stock of what film I have and replenished some of it. My film has always been stored in a refrigerator and some of it is quite old.
Today I grabbed a 20 year old roll of E200 and loaded it in my RZ67. When I looked at my E6 chems, they were not in much better shape, about 5 years old and about 1/3 left. I had poured them all from their plastic bottles into dark brown glass bottles and always have purged with Argon after mixing ( one shot ). I was surprised that the first developer was not brown. The Color developer part A had particulates in it. I heated it up and they didn't quite all dissolve. I have had this problem is the past and would just swirl things up before measuring what I need. I have found that adding part B of the color developer makes what ever particulates there are finish dissolving and that's what happened this time.
I didn't shoot anything fancy, just stepped out my back door fully expecting this experiment in age was going to be a flop. I popped off my nine shots and went back in to process.
Much to my surprise, there be images on that roll.
And for the first time in 40+ years of doing this, I have a proper filter air dryer for my film. Has cut way down on my dust issue. Now it's just the dust I pick up going to the scanner.
Not much for subject matter, but here is a sample. No exposure compensation for age, no development time adjustments, no tweaks on the scanner, straight scan on my V700.
Guess I'll keep purging my chems with Argon.
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