What to do with fogged 4x5 Ortho film?

[darinwc]

I have quite a lot of oldies Ortho film... Maybe 150 sheets?
I finally got around to testing it out and it appears badly fogged. I tried over exposing by 3 steps and pulling back on the development but still almost black negatives.
Is there any way to use this film?

 

[AnselMortensen]

What does a normally processed, but unexposed sheet look like?

 

[retina_restoration]

I have quite a lot of oldies Ortho film... Maybe 150 sheets?
I finally got around to testing it out and it appears badly fogged. I tried over exposing by 3 steps and pulling back on the development but still almost black negatives.
Is there any way to use this film?

Nit really worth trying to squeeze results out of badly degraded film, IMO. Your time is far more valuable than expired materials.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

You could make chemigrams or cliché verres with it among other things. I've seen people do crazy stuff with old materials. You just need the imagination to go for it. Forget about making regular Ansel Adams things though. Can't push a square peg through a round hole. Sometimes though the journey is the destination.

 

[isaac7]

I’ve seen people make lumen prints with film. Wonder if ortho would work for that?

 

[cliveh]

When I was teaching photography, someone gave me a box of fogged ortho film. If you then fog it completely under white light, then develop, wash and dry it, you then have a black film. My students could then use this to scratch pictures on the emulsion side and contact print onto paper. I believe Picasso did a similar technique using colour slide film.

 

[Don_ih]

Have you been handling it in total darkness or under a safelight? Some ortho material requires very dim dark red safelight.

 

[darinwc]

You can see here the bottom negative is the fogged Ortho film. It's fogged it to the edges. I did not expose that sheet at all.

The other sheet is hp5. I developed them together in the same tank. So the issue is definitely not the process.

 

[Don_ih]

Looks like the stack of film was exposed to light.

 

[isaac7]

Here’s that article I mentioned earlier about lumen printing with film.

Lumen negatives – AlternativePhotography.com

www.alternativephotography.com

I assume the times would be comparable to photo paper. Not sure what you’d see as a printing out image, would need to be fixed to become transparent I bet.

 

[darinwc]

The box of film was still sealed before I used it. So likely damaged by the heat.

That's a good idea to try the lumen with this film. I will see what I can do and report back. Hmm with the 4x5 film, I could even make contact prints from it.

 

[Bill Burk]

Funny you should bring it up. I did a couple projects with expired fogged ortho film the other day.

The film developed to contrast but had splotchy overall fog 0.3 in several regions.

So I printed through it on Grade 4 paper and you can’t really notice the fog.

Photo is “Shantytown”, the first halftone ever printed in a paper. I had obtained a classroom slide of it (turns out it was reversal Panatomic-X 35mm). And I wanted to print it so used the ortho film as an interneg.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

To rescue fogged film, I add a 1% solution of Benzotriazole. For one litre of working developer solution, I usually start with about 5ml of the Benzo solution. You most likely will have to experiment a bit. You can cut back the fog, but with all good things, there is a limit. If there is just too much fog to reduce, you may end up with a negative that is too low in contrast...scanner to the rescue!

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Actually, your example looks beyond hope, but I would still give it a go...

 

[Bill Burk]

Hey! Can you develop it to 0.3 or 0.4 density?