Shooting and Developing VERY expired film

[CamShaw74]

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been discussed to death but I just wanted to share my recent experience.

I came across two rolls of 'Standard' orthochromatic H&D 1300 127 film recently that expired in August 1939. I did consider keeping them as a historic item but I was itching to have a go shooting them.

So, I went to a car show on April 9th on a bright sunny day with a roll loaded into my Yashica 44. I rated it four stops slower at ASA 4, based on the rule of thumb of 1 stop per decade if under 20 years and one stop per two decades if over 20 years, and used my trusty Weston Master II light meter. This roll is very experimental and I just want to see if I could get anything from it. It was tricky to load as it had been rolled up for nearly 80 years but I shot 5 images on it. It was a 6 picture roll but I was talking to someone and wound past frame 2 for some reason!

I had been trawling the 'net trying to find if there is a good starting point for attempting development and decided that the best developer was probably HC-110 dilution B (1:31).

After agonizing on how I was going to develop the roll I decided to to a quick clip test. I tried 6, 7, 8 & 9 minutes on the clip in HC-110 (B) at 15 degrees C and decided the 7 min mark produced a dark enough but not totally black result so I went with that. I would have used lower temperature - maybe 10 degrees but the tap water was coming out at 13 degrees so I just went with 15.

I also doubled the agitation for an increase in contrast, so 16 inversions at the start followed by 8 every minute for a total of 7 minutes, then stop, fix, & wash as normal (all at 15 degrees C).

I was a bit nervous considering that I shot the film at ISO 4 (roughly 4 stops overexposed) and my development was mostly guess work.

There is of course a base fog (as expected) but I think the results are useable. I took the following cell phone shot looking through the negative at a light bulb (hence the white blob in the picture).

Really pleased with the result considering it was mostly guesswork. What do you folks think?

 

[bdial]

Looks like a pretty good result to me, congratulations!

 

[Kevin Caulfield]

Nice work, and the subject suits the film in terms of age.

 

[OptiKen]

Congratulations.
Your 'experiment' will become my notes for an old roll of 127 and one of 620 that I was thinking of using

 

[tokam]

Great result.

You could still rewind the backing paper onto the original film spool and seal with a dab of glue and keep it as a display item.

 

[dmr]

I would have expected more fog. Congratulations.

Personally, I'm leery of shooting expired film since getting crummy results from a found roll a few years back.

 

[Brady Eklund]

1939! That's impressive. I developed some Verichrome Pan expired in 1966 recently and it worked pretty well. I only overexposed 2 stops to compensate for the age, but then souped it in HC-110 A for like 9 minutes, so I guess that could be considered kind of a push.

 

[europanorama]

Hi all,

Apologies if this has been discussed to death but I just wanted to share my recent experience.

I came across two rolls of 'Standard' orthochromatic H&D 1300 127 film recently that expired in August 1939. I did consider keeping them as a historic item but I was itching to have a go shooting them.

So, I went to a car show on April 9th on a bright sunny day with a roll loaded into my Yashica 44. I rated it four stops slower at ASA 4, based on the rule of thumb of 1 stop per decade if under 20 years and one stop per two decades if over 20 years, and used my trusty Weston Master II light meter. This roll is very experimental and I just want to see if I could get anything from it. It was tricky to load as it had been rolled up for nearly 80 years but I shot 5 images on it. It was a 6 picture roll but I was talking to someone and wound past frame 2 for some reason!

I had been trawling the 'net trying to find if there is a good starting point for attempting development and decided that the best developer was probably HC-110 dilution B (1:31).

After agonizing on how I was going to develop the roll I decided to to a quick clip test. I tried 6, 7, 8 & 9 minutes on the clip in HC-110 (B) at 15 degrees C and decided the 7 min mark produced a dark enough but not totally black result so I went with that. I would have used lower temperature - maybe 10 degrees but the tap water was coming out at 13 degrees so I just went with 15.

I also doubled the agitation for an increase in contrast, so 16 inversions at the start followed by 8 every minute for a total of 7 minutes, then stop, fix, & wash as normal (all at 15 degrees C).

I was a bit nervous considering that I shot the film at ISO 4 (roughly 4 stops overexposed) and my development was mostly guess work.

There is of course a base fog (as expected) but I think the results are useable. I took the following cell phone shot looking through the negative at a light bulb (hence the white blob in the picture).

Really pleased with the result considering it was mostly guesswork. What do you folks think?

with your rule 15 years old film exposed + 1.5 stops and 30 years old one also 1.5 stops, is this correct? i have them. i would rather expose the younger colornegative film +1 but develop + 15%. resulting in amazing HDR. i will test the much older film the same way.

 

[europanorama]

how is dynamic range? is it contrasty or pleasing, high DR? as predicted for colornegative film 400 asa tested. have comparison. pancam used. new film is useless since too much contrast indoors.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

Year-old thread... but interesting.

 

[MartinCrabtree]

I'd love to see a print.