Rebekah wrote: > Should I toss expired film? Yes. Please toss it my way. :-)
Seriously - it depends on how the film has been stored, what kind of film it is, and how you plan to print it. True silver B&W stored in a refrigerator or freezer will fog slightly as it ages. I've shot 20 year out of date Tri-X and Plus-X with perfectly good results, but it was stored in a freezer. The base was somewhat fogged, and the degree of fogging depended on the developer used. Rodinal, D19, and Dektol seemed to produce the cleanest base - on par with fresh film to my eye. Microdol-X or D76 fogged up noticeably more, but not to the point of being unusable (when scanned.) One exception - infrared films will loose their IR sensitivity and generally degrade much faster than convention Pan B&W films. WRT to color print and slide film - Again, stored in a freezer should be good for several years after expiration date. Last fall i shot out a couple rolls of Agfa Ultra 50 - long extinct - and it was fine. I have a bunch of E100S and original Velvia 50 that I use sometimes, and it seems to be fine. At worst you get a color tint to the out come which is easy to correct if you scan the film and print digitally. If you plan to project the slides or print in a wet darkroom, I would recommend using fresh film. I'm currently doing preliminary work on a project that I plan to shoot on 120 B&W roll film, but since I'm just knocking it out now I've taken this as a chance to use up some old stock of 35mm B&W film. Over the last couple of weeks I've shot Tri-X, OrwoPan, Efke R100, Adox CHM 400, and Delta 100, all with expiration dates 2 to 4 years old. It has all worked out fine - mostly because the film was stored in the freezer from the time it was fresh. There is some slight fogging to the base - the Efke, which can have a perfectly clear base when fresh, is slightly gray. But less gray than most other films normally are even when fresh. When it comes to B&W film, I'd take a 3 year out of date but properly stored roll over a fresh roll that spent a weekend in a hot car any time. HTH - MCC - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mark Cassino Photography Kalamazoo, Michigan www.markcassino.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
