When is it safe to look at negatives?

[Mr502go]

Is it safe after developer before bleach? It seems that my old film needs less developer time. . .but don't know if it is safe to observe out of tank after developer. My reasoning is. . .one edge crinkled in my reel and was pushed against the next layer of film. . .that contact edge looked great which makes mebthink that standard developing times are too long for old film. The film I am working with is Kodak gold 200 circa 1998

 

[koraks]

C41 development time has always been the same. There's no good reason to expect development time should be different for older film.
How does inspecting the film after development but before bleaching help? In principle you could do it, provided a stop bath is used before inspection. But there's no advantage to doing this, and it will be difficult to make sense of what you see due to the presence of both developed silver and remaining silver halide.

Btw, depending on storage conditions, the film may just be junk by now. Only if it was always cold stored it can be expected to yield somewhat reasonable results. But YMMV, some people don't have a problem with heavy fog, loss of speed and grossly distorted color rendition.

 

[foc]

If you want to inspect any negative, I would suggest you wait until you have the full process finished and the negs are dry.
C41 is so straight forward, all you have to do is follow the instructions and voilá.

 

[Rudeofus]

You can watch developed and washed color negative film in broad daylight, but once the light hit the film, you can not continue development, because now all the silver halide has become developable. Therefore this interruption won't help you much. What you can do is install an IR light source and inspect you film through night vision goggles, this is what large film makers have done and probably still do, and both IR light source and night vision goggles have become very cheap in the last 10 years. However: if the wavelength if the IR light source is too short, it may still expose the red sensitive layer. If the wavelength is too long, the film dyes may be transparent to these wavelengths. There's a good chance, that even with IR light source and night vision goggles you won't be able to determine film contrast.

All C-41 film these days has an antihalation layer inside the emulsion. In some cases this is a black dye, which will wash out in the color developer stage. In some films this antihalation layer is made out of colloidal silver, which will not be removed before the bleach/BLIX step. Therefore you will encounter film rolls, which will look very dense until they have been bleached and fixed.

Here is what I would suggest: develop the roll for standard duration, then wash the film. Cut off several image frames, BLIX these and check contrast. If contrast is too low, develop the remaining film for an extra 30-60 seconds, otherwise move to bleach/BLIX right away. If film is waaaay underdeveloped, develop for 60 seconds, wash again, cut off several image frames, bleach/fix or BLIX them, inspect. Continue these 60 second increments until development is where you want it. Remember that dev time for all similar rolls.

PS: Since a hybrid work flow is by far the best option for long expired film, one or two stops push or pull matter much less than in a purely analog work flow. Don't worry too much about +/- 30 second errors in development time, there will be acceptable images in all cases. If you want perfection, get fresh film.

 

[Mr502go]

Thank you all for your help. I am very new to processing, and just don't have the experience for non standard situations.

 

[koraks]

That's why it's good you asked! I hope some of our advice is useful to you. Sadly, c41 doesn't leave much room for non-standard situations - if you want good results that is. There's of course always room for experimentation.

 

[brbo]

My reasoning is. . .one edge crinkled in my reel and was pushed against the next layer of film. . .that contact edge looked great...

Well, I bet it didn't really look that great. It just wasn't as dense as the rest of the film. But that doesn't mean that with less development you can rescue more of the information on a very fogged film. Were you actually able to observe any pictorial information on the crinkled part like a fragment of a scene shot on the negative or the rebate markings? If not, I wouldn't make any conclusions of how much development old film needs.

 

[ic-racer]

When is it safe to look at negatives?

Pretty much any time. The old adage that one needs one or 2 years of digital experience before they can look at negatives is just not true...