Time between exposure andndevelopment?

Hello all,

I have been experimenting with 4x5 paper and film negatives and have not ventured too far from home yet with my 4x5, so processing the same day has never been an issue. I am going to be travelling for a few weeks in July. I have 8 film holders, but imagine that I will be taking more than 16 shots.

I have a film changing bag but am wondering if I can just put the exposed paper/film negatives in a light tight bag/box to wait until I get home to process them? or does the latent image degrade over time so I should plan on bringing chemicals to process them on the road?

Thanks,
Craig

This thread will give you more answers than you would have thought possible:

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Essentially, Stephen's tests indicate relatively little change between one hour and 31 days.

However, the story is a bit different with paper negatives, which usually have poorer latent stability so if you're going on a trip, I would suggest just shooting film. The usual approach is to take as many empty film boxes as full ones, first unload your holders into the "exposed" box, then reload them from the "fresh" box (don't have both boxes in the darkbag at the same time!). Obviously if you're using film-boxes with the black plastic bag in them, they're properly light-tight because those containers are designed to transport film safely.

If you're doing Zone-system adjustments, clearly you will need to have separate boxes for sheets requiring N, N-1, N+1, etc development.

That thread explicitly doesn't name the film because the poster doesn't want it to be about that particular film. However, I'm pretty sure that films with better long-exposure reciprocity characteristics keep better than those without. Therefore, you should see excellent image stability from Acros, TMX and TMY and perhaps poorer stability from things like Fomapan. The reason is that reciprocity failure is due to the slow loss of (partial) exposure in the shadow regions, via the same electrical leakage mechanism that causes loss of latent image. Either way, a few weeks is no problem at all for a modern film.

Avoid heat and you are likely to be fine.

Yeah. Read my mind. Heat and humidity can accelerate degradation. Albeit, only to a point over the course of a week or two, but it can make the difference between a fine negative and a lot of work at the enlarger.

Thanks guys. I'm going to the west coast (Canada and US) in mid July, so...humidity...definitely...heat...hopefully. I'll be shooting mostly Delta 100 and Adox CHS 50 film. Not too sure about taking the paper neg's now, I've cut a bunch of old Agfa and Ilford paper (I've been pleasantly suprised with the Agfa paper negatives).

Thanks again for the input everyone.

Craig