I tried soaking a strip of roll film with stuck backing paper in ethanol, Photo-flo and baking soda solutions but it did not help. I ended up developing the roll with the fragments of backing paper stuck to the emultion after giving it a good soak in distilled water.
Nice! Considering the age and storage conditions the results are as good as they get.
I would recommend against extending the development time. 8 minutes at 20 C is too much in my experience (60% longer than recommended). All you achieve is a denser negative with more fog that will be harder to scan and print.
I did not notice any effect from pre-washing the negatives but the anti-halation layer that comes off Verichrome Pan in roll formats is a very pleasant tint of pink.
Also, I never experienced anti-halation layer sticking to the developed negative but I only developed roll formats (127, 120/620, 116/616 and 122).
A couple of cloth pegs attached to the end of the negative will help in keeping it flat while drying.
The fog is not too bad on this roll. You can try extending the development time, 8 minutes should be fine. You can also agitate a bit more to further increase contrast. With latent images 60 years old expect to lose information in shadows even for a properly exposed negative.Maybe stick to 18C but do 7 or 8 minutes? They're so thin.
The fog is not too bad on this roll. You can try extending the development time, 8 minutes should be fine. You can also agitate a bit more to further increase contrast. With latent images 60 years old expect to lose information in shadows even for a properly exposed negative.
You have two competing factors here: the speed at which image density is formed against that of the fog. If you plot the curve of the ratio of the two versus development time you will see a hump-like curve. With very long development times your image density is no longer increases while fog density continues to grow. The curve is usually very gentle so there is some room for error/experimentation. The goal when developing very old latent images is to get the best image density to fog ratio rather than achieve a certain contrast.
You've done quite well. Good luck with the rest of your archive. This must be very rewarding to develop your father's negatives which are 60 years old.
The bad news: The negatives are way underdeveloped. There was lingering anti-halation on the edges, but on the outer part of the roll and not the inner. This It could be the reel, but I doubt it since it wasn't present the whole way through. (I could use a SS reel, but this film is so tightly curled I don't know that it will stay in place.) I only did a 1 minute pre-wash, so I'll do longer next time around. There is evidence of some fungus, but not enough that it diminishes seeing photos my dad shot 60 years ago. It would be easier to tell with better developed negs.
If you decide to extend your development time you can safely eliminate the prewash step (I never use it). Agitate continuously for 30 seconds after filling the tank and then 10 seconds (4 inversions) at the start of each minute. If you have a twizzle stick for your tank you can try combining the two methods of agitation, maybe it could help with the sticky emulsion if this is really the cause of your problem.Old film can be sticky. When you load sticky film into a plastic reel, it sometimes sticks!
Probably worth trying a different reel/tank or load the film emulsion side out (if it is even possible with a stiff and curled old film).I doubt the emulsion was sticky as such -- more likely the tight curl of film that's been on a takeup spool for 50+ years just kept the emulsion side hard against the groove in the reel, more so on the outside where the reel is less tightly curved.
The "underdeveloped" look could be due to latent image fading.
Probably worth trying a different reel/tank or load the film emulsion side out (if it is even possible with a stiff and curled old film).
Sometimes they just disappear. I don't really understand what is happening here but presumably the process of sensitizing silver halides with light is reversible and the energy provided by the photons during exposure somehow dissipates returning silver salts to their unsensitized state. Shadow areas which received just enough light to become developable would be affected first. That's the hypothesis anyway. Fogging (chemical, thermal and radiational) should theoretically counteract this process. It is complicated. If someone has an explanation on what is happenning with latent images please share your knowledge (in a new thread).
Fogging (chemical, thermal and radiational) should theoretically counteract this process.
This is a known fact.
The edges of both rolls show some degredation (even frame lines fade away) and especially on the second roll it seems to spread from the perfs. Not sure what that’s about.
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