Developing a huge pile of old C-41 film

I just dropped off 30 rolls of C41 at National Camera Exchange. Most of those

rolls were taken when I was in college (1995-2002) (mostly 2000-2002, probably).

Three of them were probably from before 1995.

 

I decided after I came home that I care more about what's on those older three

rolls than I thought. Should I call them up in the morning and ask them to take

those rolls out of my order, and send those rolls in to Rocky Mountain Photo or

filmrescue.com? Or will they basically be okay? The guy at National Camera

said that C41 film is a lot more stable than the older kind of color film and so

it shouldn't be much of a problem, but now I'm wondering if I shouldn't get them

done somewhere else instead.

 

How much does different development times help really old film like that?

John,

 

Don't send those rolls to Rocky Mountain or Film Rescue - they're not old enough. They will be fine at your local lab.

With film that has sat around for anywhere from five to 12 years, don't expect perfect color balance regardless of where you send the rolls.

Right, lower your expectations.

 

I've processed old C-41 and managed to get some images off for film scans but converted to

black and white as the color (what there was of it) was seriously munged. Now old E-6 is

even worse, but I did recently process an old roll from 1990 and got some very faint images

with about 80% of the roll gone blank. On the other hand I've recently processed some TMax

from 1988 with very good results.

I get rolls exposed that long ago in used cameras all the time, and it really depends how they have been stored.

 

If they have been kept cool and dry you might get away with it but the results will be poor. If you have kept them properly sealed in a freezer than the results won't be too different from newly exposed film.

 

There is a differnce in aging with exposed and unexposed film, but I find that unexposed stuff will keep in a freezer for twenty years or more(!) and still give acceptable results. Even film not stored in a freezer or fridge will often give acceptable results.

 

What I tend to find with outdated unexposed film kept at room temperature, is that maybe four out of five rolls are OK for general purpose use and and the remainder vary from not so good, to absolute rubbish. (Having said that, I have bought supposedly new film which has been absolutely terrible!)

 

That tells me that how film ages depends on very small variations in impurities in the initial mix. This also suggests that any special processing is going to be a bit hit-and-miss.

 

What you can expect if you send them to 'old film' specialists is that all the films will be treated the same way based on their use by date. This will be aimed at an average aging process, which means that most of the films they process will produce an acceptable result for most folks. But it also means that film which has not aged as quickly may well not give as good a result as if it had been developed normally.

 

The only way to determine exactly how to develop a particular roll would be to test develop a sample and use that to estimate the changes required. It would be possible to use the header, but I'm pretty sure they don't bother!

 

 

Gordon