Testing large variety of out dated films.

[Christopher Colley]

Greetings!

I have recently been lucky enough to get access to a quantity of old film. As the person who offered the film said "it has been in my freezer until the past few months" seeing as some of it expired in the early 80s and the boxes look pristine I am willing to believe it.

Now.. A lot of this stuff (mostly 35mm, some 120) appears to be bulk loaded or just a roll in in a cannister without a box.

I am wondering a way to test some of this without shooting it..

For example, there is 12 rolls of panatomic-X in the stash that appear to be hand loaded and each is labeled as 36 frames. As a test I considered cutting off a leader plus an inch or two to reveal the unexposed film, then developing it at whichever time I can find as a baseline and then measuring the basefog with a densitometer on each of the rolls.... If consistant between all twelve I would shoot as its normal film for a small project I have which this small amount of unattainable film would suit well.

Now I am wondering, granting that my developing times are in the ballpark (and further refined through actual exposures) would the method described above be a good method for ensuring that I do not end up with 'lost' work when working with this film of unknown origin/storage/etc?

some of the stuff includes......efke kb14 and kb17, agfa 25iso, kodak recording 2475, techpan and some other stuff

edit: I guess I am wondering if i should be worrying more about fog than anything else with these old films... am I missing something with contrast/density problems? etc..

 

[Paul Howell]

Low speed films like Adox K14, Agfa 25, and Panatomic X will have the lest amount of fog, but may have lost contrast and film speed. I have Plux X and Pan F from the 70s, no fog to speak of but appears to have lost a stop in terms of speed. High speed film like TriX, Recording Film may have more issues with fog. Over the years I obtained GAF 500 and TriX from the 60 to late 70s, both had been frozen but were fogged and unusable. Developing an exposed strip and using your destatmotier will at least help you determine how much fog there is, for film speed you will need to test, or just shoot at 1/2 box speed and develop at recommended times. An antifog agent may help as well.