outdated Arista Pro 400

While rearranging my film freezer I found an unopened box of Arista Pro 400 asa 4x5 film exp date 9/2000. It says made in england. Can anyone tell me what brand of film it is? I know it was bought from Freestyle along with a box of Arista Pro 125asa 4x5 dated 2/1996 which is also very out of date and also made in england. Is it possible that these are Ilford films? They have always been kept at -10 deg and the freezer is lead lined so I guess I'll try a few shots with each to see if they are worth using. I have three lead lined freezers for film and paper from when I was a busy pro and I've been emptying them over the years and have not been replenishing my supplies. Last month I found a 250 sheet box of trix pro 320 from 1968 and naturally it was very fogged. I hate wasting materials like this just because I was careless in my inventory record keeping. Please tell me that I'm not the only one who has ever done this.
Denise Libby

You are the only one, that will admit it.

That should be HP-5+. For a while sold at Freestyle as "England's Finest".

Yeah, take a couple of test sheets to guage film speed and contrast and then have at it.

Thanks guys. I think I'll test it with D76 since that's usually the test standard and Fotch, you may be right but boy! do I feel stupid.
Denise Libby

I've been digging up stuff from the '70's, lucky for me it was paper for the most part and I fixed it and it was good so I used it for Carbon prints. That's putting it to good use. The film I just put back and will deal with it later when film is no longer available. How a person can move and still have things show up is beyond me but it happens.

It is Ilford HP5 and FP4 TMK.

It sounds like it was stored with more care than most film is stored, so I would expect it to be fully usable. Just shoot a test pic with each emulsion first to check how much fog you have, then compensate for it with future sheets, if necessary. A MacBeth chart or step wedge would be ideal to shoot, but you could shoot anything. If in doubt, I'd overexpose up to a stop, and use a standard development routine at first, as opposed to overdevelopment.

1996? I have color film in my freezer older than that. No lead liner, either. Mostly it's okay or better, although I had some HP5+ that showed some base fog. Since it was film I bulk loaded, I suspect it sat in the loader for a while before I decided to freeze it. I recently developed some Konica IR from 1992 that looked pretty good. I expect my factory loaded HP5+ from '96 will be fine, as will the Elite 400 from '92. Maybe I have low standards, though.

Ulysses

By the way, how much lead lines your freezer (i.e. how thick is it?), and does it have tight joints?

Gammas and other high energy radiation have a way of "finding" holes in shields quite well, so anything but a perfect seal might have rendered the shielding far less effective than you might think.

Also, it takes two inches of lead to block 90% of gammas.

In short, I would venture to guess that whatever lead shielding you had done has not really helped all that much, unless you really had it custom designed by someone who knows about radiation shielding (which means that you spent a $hit-ton of money on it, and would need a crane to move the thing).

Storage underground might be the most practical way for the average person to shield film, since a foot and a half of tightly packed dirt or one foot of concrete will shield just as much gamma radiation as two inches of lead. As such, I'd guess that a freezer in a basement is a pretty good place for storing film.

Dear 2f/2f;
The lead lining of my freezers was done when I was working with Morton Thiokol and received some surplus silicon lead foam sheeting 3/4 in thick. It was used for making satellites radiation safe during solar flare activity. It has the same radiation protection of 4in lead and weighs 6lb sq ft and was being sold for scrap. I'm told that it cost $2000 a sq ft. I got twelve sq yards for $2000 as it was being replaced with a polyethylene based foam multi layer titanium foil shield that weight less than 2oz per sq ft and cost $50,000 sq ft and had the effective protection of 9in of lead. It is my understanding that the new radiation protection for the ISS survival compartment uses a 6in thick layer of some exotic foam plastic sheeting that doubles that protection, weighs about the same and cost???? heaven only knows but you can bet it is not cheap.
Denise Libby

I hope that if I build a photo freezer, that I can land such a good deal! You are certainly one of the exceptions I mentioned in my post. Blocking 99% of gammas with 3/4-inch of lightweight material is certainly amazing...but probably out of reach for most of us.

Dear 2f/2f;
In the 1980s there was a firm in Maryland that sold material and plans for home bomb shelters and they mentioned foam lead sheeting for radiation protection was available from them and many years later a friend of mine found a similar but thinner material, 1/4 in at a military surplus store near Berkley, Ca for $200 a yard and he bought 4 yards for his freezer and for an air travel film case. He told me that the Xray machines at airports couldn't see through it so they made him open it himself and they hand inspected the contents, which was what he wanted in the first place. I believe it may have been surplus from Lawrence Labs or one of the defense contractors in the area.
Denise Libby