Vintage Tri-X. Developing tips sought.

I inspected a Yashica 124G earlier this evening which is being sold on ebay. The seller is local and allowed me to pop round and look it over. There was an exposed roll of Tri-X in the camera and the seller let me take it home with me. I'm wondering how old this film may be. I've never shot Tri-X in 120 so I don't know if the backing paper is current or not. The paper is green with yellow text. Film type is "Tri-X Pan Prof. 120 film". Can a rough estimate of age be got from that information?

How should I develop this? My only developer is HC-110. Any tips greatly appreciated!

I can't guess. Just develop it in some D-76 for the normal times.
Someone might chime in about anti-foggants etc... but the images may have been fogged long ago when the back was opened accidently.

Develop it normally.

You might appreciate the 'Found Film' website: http://westfordcomp.com/updated/found.htm (click on the blue links, it isn't clear how to navigate, which is best done rather randomly on this site).

That is likely to be the older style 320 ISO film.

Kodak technical publications F4017 (current) and F9 (previous) talk about the differences:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f4017/f4017.pdf

and

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f9/f9.pdf

The development suggestions in the F9 document would be more likely to be accurate.

perkeleellinen said:

My only developer is HC-110. Any tips greatly appreciated!

Click to expand...

HC-110 is just fine too.

Yep, HC-110 is great for old films. I've developed 1950's expired exposed rolls just fine. I like to use low temperature, 18C/65F for the suggested time for that temperature (usually a minute longer than at 20C/68F). I find the low temp helps prevent fogging.

Thanks for all the comments. Hopefully I'll get this developed today.

The camera is being sold in aid of a local hospice so if there's any people on the film I think I might be able to generate some local publicity for the hospice and also to nudge film into people's awareness as the superior archival medium. Nice story for the local newspaper.

Success!

The film had a wicked curl and it was tough to load it onto the spiral. But it worked anyway and I've got nine images; a mixture of landscape and portraits. The initial shots have good contrast but as the roll progresses it gets more and more foggy. Still, I think all will print fine.

Great! Yeah, the old films really curl badly.