Old film refuses to build density, how come?

Hello all...

I recently bought a bulk film loader, which has a bit of old film in it. Being curious, I had to know what film it was, so I initially cut a bit of it and developed it in a graduate with the replenished Xtol I have, without fixing it. 10' seemed to be ok, so I loaded a bit more in a reel and processed it. The edge markings (KODAK S'AFETY FILM 5063) revealed that it's old Tri-X Pan 400 from Rochester, but they were faint. I checked an old (1998) edition of Xtol's datasheet and the recommended development time for this film was 6'45'' at 20°C. At this point I was worried that my developer had petered out, being 8,5 months old. So, I processed another fully exposed piece in Rodinal 1+25 for 7'. Somewhat better, but still lacking in density. Even 20' in Xtol wouldn't give reasonable density. Then I tried a TMY2 leader, which proved that my replenished Xtol is still fine after 8,5 months (there was reasonable density!), so the old film won't build density.

Now, the question is... why? It's not that I'd like to use the old TX, I don't care about it, I'm just curious.

You might try overexposing it a stop or two. I've not shot much old film, but did shoot an old roll of Verichrome Pan from the late 1960's which I shot at 125 but then developed in Diafine. It came out surprisingly well, but I would add another stop of exposure the next time.

Same happens with some older papers. Faster films are the first to suffer.

Ian

Reid, the pieces I processed weren't used in a camera. They were exposed in full light! Instead of getting more or less "bulletproof" pieces of film, I got weak density, and that's why I'm puzzled.

Ian Grant said:

Same happens with some older papers. Faster films are the first to suffer.

Ian

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So, not only do you get increased fog, but reduced Dmax as well, eh?

Age is but one variable - the other is heat.

I have film from the mid 60's that was once about EI100 , and is now closer to EI25. It has been frozen for at least 30 of the past years. It takes 18' in undiluted d76 to yield any sort of reasonable gamma. It is not too bad on the base fog though.

I had HP5 (non+) from the 80s that I shot at 400 and used push to 1600 dev times, came out very well.

What kind of 'full light' was it exposed in? Even under crappy dim consumer tungsten bulbs, just taking it out in it for a couple of secounds should easily be enough, but generally I also find these bulbs are ~2800K with quite a green tint to it as well.

I cant imagine what the problem is here... do you have a flash/speedlite you can flash the film with then try?


Try leave a cut piece out to bake in the sun till black?

Athiril, saying that these pieces were massively overexposed would be an understatement. Some of them were left for 15-20' in a room with a 72W tungsten halogen lamp. The only piece that wasn't exposed was the one developed to see what film it was, based on edge markings. A fresh film, exposed in the same light intensity, just for the time it would take to load it in a camera would give reasonable density, but as Ian and Mike said, age and storage conditions can seriously degrade an emulsion's ability to yield acceptable density/contrast.

Yeah it still sounds strange, you should still be able to reach maximum density with enough exposure and development.

Try a cooler light source, like sun light.

edit: What did the test strip look like after fogging+dev+fix? And do you have one that you just fixed without dev? Clear?

Athiril said:

... What did the test strip look like after fogging+dev+fix? And do you have one that you just fixed without dev? Clear?

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Hard to describe, but let's say that 10' in replenished Xtol gave it density that matches the density of a zone 6-7 frame from some film tests I've done. I didn't try only fixing some of it, but even if it had printed out, it would add density. Anyway, it's basically useless, but good enough to season replenishable developers...

I have a simple extreme-contrast b&w developer recipe I made if you want it. It gave 14 year old Vision1 500T a good separation of dMax from dMin from only a scene with 3 stops of contrast range, where as a 10-stop range processed normally gave dMin really close to dMax because of the film condition (basically almost the same values).

Details here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/athiril/4489062255/

Given the fact that there's not much left of it, brewing a special developer for it wouldn't make much sense. Besides, I've got some print developers who would probably do the trick. Thanks for the link though, interesting concoction.

Ah, a shame