exposed, but have to wait a while until i can process....

bear with me if this has been asked before, i'll simply confess to not having

searched the archives before posting....

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but on to the problem;- i'm shooting a fair amount of black and whites at the

moment, mostly hp5 and apx100, but i don't have acess to a darkroom for

now. i figure it'll be a while until i can process my films, so i need to find out

how it would be best to store them until i can. is it simply to throw a few in a

zip-lock and freeze them, or are there any tricks of the trade i should get

acquainted with..?

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i'd appreciate all tips,...

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best - th

How long's "a while"? A few weeks, on a shelf in the shade will be fine. If you use the fridge for longer storage, make sure they're sealed in something airtight and you leave time after removing them to return to ambient temperature. I don't think freezing's necessary, unless we're talking decades...

If you have dark film cans to spare (or steal some from the local lab), toss the film into those cannisters and place in a cool, dark spot. You should be fine.

I'll second the fridge-

 

 

I shoot more in the summer,but process less,due to-

 

A. not being at home

 

B. not having the time

 

C. when I am home and have the time,my third floor hell hole is too hot

 

D.my darkroom is only dark after the sun goes down,which is pretty late this time of year,so I throw it in the fridge,process it in the fall,and do most of my printing over the winter.The only saving grace of winter,is it gets dark at 5:30.

If you can avoid it, don't push your film if you can't develop it immediately. Pushed film will lose what little shadow detail it has within a month at room temperature.

 

As long as it's exposed normally and stored at least cool (preferably refrigerated or frozen) it'll keep quite a while.

 

A few years ago I exposed half a roll of Provia, then forgot about the rest and left the camera in a drawer for a year. After digging out the camera I finished the roll and had it processed immediately. I couldn't see any difference between the first and last half of the roll.

 

I've seen pretty much the same thing with normally exposed Tri-X that was refrigerated for a year before developing. No significant image degradation.

 

The most extreme case I've seen was when I developed a roll of TMX (T-Max 100) that had been exposed up to seven years earlier. The results were surprisingly good. Reasonable base fog too, which I attribute to Microphen.

thanks all for replies.

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in this case "a while" is a bit shady, i assume several months at least. the

reason i started to think about this is because i seem to recall an article (or

was it interview) where this came up, and it was stated that keeping these

films well beyond expiration date shouldn't hurt them too much, but it was

rather imortant to process asap after they were exposed (do i remember

where, when, who by/with??, of course not!-). but my films are nowhere near

expiring, so i'll get back to sleeping at night again because of this ... ,-)

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so fridge it is, thanks again.

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i appreciate your help.