Film quality then and now

<p>I know by now how long some films have lasted. I have used 50 year old Panatomic-X that seems close to as good as new. Fine results from 30 year old Verichrome Pan and 20 year old Tri-X. (Not so good for 30 year old Tri-X.)</p>

<p>I have been assuming that current production films are as good or better, but maybe not. How will films made today be 20, 30, or 50 years from now? If kept cold, will they be as good as cold stored film today from 50 years ago?</p>

<p>I selected B&W negative as the category, but color film from today, cold stored, is also interesting, as long as the chemistry is available. </p>

<p>Traditional black & white film can withstand storage at higher temperatures than C-41 film can. For long-term storage, freezing is recommended in any case.</p>

<p>In another thread on Photo.net I read that freezer storage can lengthen the usable life of film by roughly ten times, i.e. if a film has an expiration date two years away, then freezing will allow it to be stored for up to 20 years and still obtain acceptable results. This only applies to slower films of ISO 100 and below, because, as Jochen says, natural cosmic radiation will have adverse effects on the film, even when frozen, and there really isn't much you can practically do to avoid that, and higher ISO films suffer damage more quickly in this respect than lower ISO films.</p>

<p>It should probably also be mentioned that, <a href="http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/techInfo/e30/e30.pdf">according to Kodak</a>, "while storage in a refrigerator or freezer can be highly beneficial, you should not rely on it to extend film life beyond the "Develop Before" date."</p>

<p>Kodak has figured out how to engineer high-speed emulsions to reduce sensitivity to background radiation (cosmic rays). They applied this to Portra 800 to increase the shelf life, so that it could be economically feasible to produce. (You have to sell out a production run before it expires.)<br>

Back in the day, Kodak Verichrome Pan was clearly engineered for extremely long shelf-life and strong latent image keeping. Folks would take a couple of year to shoot a roll, taking a picture or two at "important events."<br>

I doubt that there's been any change in B&W emulsion making that has increased the longevity of processed B&W emulsions in the last 50 years. There's probably more risk in the cellulose acetate base suffering from "vinegar syndrome."</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...as long as the chemistry is available.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Most of that chemistry is off patent and freely available to mix your own. <br>

<br />The APUG guys have the recipes. So, I wouldn't worry too much about processing chemistry.</p>

<p>The basic answer is that no one knows. The readers of this forum have more experience with very long term raw stock keeping than anyone at Kodak. The only experience within the company was the surveys of the quality of processed customer work. If a roll of film had very poor quality, the emulsion number would be checked to determine the age. X-ray fogging was easy to detect. Other kinds of damage from heat or multi-directional radiation were tougher to diagnose. </p>

<p>Will Tri-X made recently last as long as Tri-X made 20 years ago? Probably, but don't bet the rent money on it. This product has moved to different coating machines in the past decade. Different machines coat at different speeds and have different viscosity and surfactant requirements to coat properly. These changes are not known to have significant effects on keeping, but the keeping tests did not extend past the expiration date. </p>

<p>When it comes to very long latent image keeping, no one has more experience than the people at Film Rescue International. </p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

<p>It seems to me that many things aren't made as well as they used to be.<br>

Electrolytic capacitors seem to be causing me more and more problems. </p>

<p>Long latent image keeping is interesting, but I was asking more about storing film for later use. <br>

If film is still produced for 10 or 20 years, we will still have enough to use for 30 or 40 or 50 years.</p>

<p>I probably won't survive frozen films after 50 years but OK here is my opinion:<br>

Slow speed films (< iso 50) you can keep very long when frozen only in 120 roll film the paper can get sticky after 20 years or so. Best and compact storage is 35mm bulk but regular 135-36 cassettes are also no problem when the freezer is a bit bigger. When Fotokemika stopped producing photo materials in 2012 I kept enough Efke 25 / Rollei Pan 25 35mm/120 roll films in my freezer for the coming years.</p>

<p><em>It seems to me that many things aren't made as well as they used to be.</em><br>

<em> </em><br>

God, not again. The best way to settle this is to buy fresh film and hope for the best.Too many people asking this sort of question hoard stale-dated film while bemoaning the shrinking selection of film stocks. It's a consumable and if you want future supplies, you have to use it up and buy more--not just store piles 1998 vintage Plus X next to those utility turkeys in your freezer.<em><br /></em></p>

<p>It should be Arrhenius, like most chemical reactions:</p>

<p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation</p>

<p>which has an exponential, such that it gets a lot longer with not so big a decrease in T.</p>

<p>This is also why it goes bad so fast at not so much higher temperatures.</p>

<blockquote>However, the keeping properties of films — especially color negative films — have improved dramatically in the last several years.</blockquote>

<p>I just found this while looking for something else:</p>

<p>http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/e6/e6.pdf</p>

<p>it seems intended to apply to color films, but maybe also to black and white.</p>

<p>Panatomic-X in Diafine was my favorite for many years (and many years ago).<br>

That was before T-Max even existed. </p>

<p>I don't know how the grain of Panatomic-X and TMax in Diafine compare.</p>

<p>Film quality then and now reminds me of an article to the point making the point the a 35mm frame of Ektar film records 20% more information than a 35mm full frame D-800,<br>

http://www.japancamerahunter.com/2014/06/film-news-adox-interview/</p>

<p>http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/pdf/e40.pdf seems to be the replacement for Ektar 25, but doesn't have a MTF graph.</p>

<p>Ektar 100 http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/pdf/e40.pdf looks like between 50 and 80 cycles/mm, so 100 to 160 pixels/mm, so maybe 14 megapixels for a 24mmx36mm frame. Also, about 12 zones, so maybe more than the D800.</p>

<p>Film holds R, G, and B at that resolution, while the D800 has R, G, or B filters over each of its pixels. Seems to me that one should correct for that. Does the D800 have a low-pass filter?</p>

<p><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=888240">Robert Vonk</a>, Dec 02, 2015; 05:52 a.m.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>in 120 roll film the paper can get sticky after 20 years</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Is this true even if the film is stored in its airtight wrapping?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>When Fotokemika stopped producing photo materials in 2012 I kept enough Efke 25 / Rollei Pan 25 35mm/120 roll films in my freezer for the coming years.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Problem is, almost nobody know they stop production.</p>

<p>A lot of film is gone now. I miss Fuji Reala and Fuji Astia. Some of you will tell me it is a question of taste but I think Portra is not only a different look but a tehnically measurable worse look. Worse as in less acurate reproduction and as in less accurate to the perception of the eye.<br>

<br />I also think the transition to more scannable film did deteriorate film quality. Although I can't explain why. It seemed a good idea to make film more easily scanable, but I like the scans from my films before the transition more and again I don't mean this in the sort of looking like film (grainy, coarse, etc.).</p>

<p>Since someone brought up the film-vs-digital quality thing: I would urge anyone who is interested in this to look at photographs taken with similar lenses and ideally of similar subjects and by the same photographer both with a recent digital camera and on film, and reproduced the same way. A good example of this is the book 'French Kiss' by Peter Turnley: it consists of photographs of Paris, taken by him over several decades with film Leicas and (I think) an M9 for the recent ones. All the prints were made by the same printer via an internegative (I think for all of them, certainly for the digital images).</p>

<p>The 'objective quality' difference is really obvious to me, and it finally puts this whole debate to bed: digital has won for small format. What is a bit more interesting is the 'subjective quality': it turns out I much prefer the film-originated images, but I prefer them <em>because they look like film</em>, not because they have more bogopixels.</p>

<p>And that's really the point: film clearly was once objectively better than digital, and equally clearly it will at some point (which I think is now comfortably in the past, but am also not interested in debating) objectively be not as good as digital. So there simply is no point in arguing that you want to use film 'because it is objectively better'. You don't paint with watercolours rather than oils 'because they are better', you paint with them <em>because they are watercolours</em> and the resulting painting looks like a watercolour. And this is why film is interesting: <em>because it looks like film</em>.</p>

Just one other thought. When an object is taken ut of the freezer and not hermetically sealed there is condensation to

some extent. I assume one would want to keep their film dry. Apparently it does not seem to. E a bid issue here but one

may want to keep the film sealed until it is at ambient temperature.

A principal question of resolution, film vs digital: The resolution of a film picture is calculated as the sum of the reciproque value of the resolution of the lens and the reciproque value of the resolution of the film - i.e. if the lens resolves 100 lpm and the. film 50 lpm, then the final picture will have a resolution of 33 lpm (1/100 + 2/100 = 3/100 = 1/33).

But how is it with digital sensors?

Kind regards,

Stig T. Rasmussen

The main difference in longevity of unexposed emulsions has more to do with the chemicals used to make them. Many of the chemicals used back then are now banned from use. Now dyes have taken the place of many of the chemicals in emulsions.

As far as quality... both then n now films are top quality n made with very exacting quality controls. I used alot of plus x n tri x in my day but have to say those T grain films really kick ass for sharpness, grain, and tonal value.

Longevity... well time will tell.

My tmax negatives are looking great and I started shooting T grains when it first hit the streets.

A principal question of resolution, film vs digital: The resolution of a film picture is calculated as the sum of the reciproque value of the resolution of the lens and the reciproque value of the resolution of the film - i.e. if the lens resolves 100 lpm and the. film 50 lpm, then the final picture will have a resolution of 33 lpm (1/100 + 2/100 = 3/100 = 1/33).

 

But how is it with digital sensors?

 

Kind regards,

Stig T. Rasmussen

I hate responding to necro threads revivals, especially ones where film pundits quote stupid remarks about digital simply because they can't take decent pictures with digital and need an excuse bordering on middle ages alchemy, but in keeping with technical accuracy...

The problem with DPM measurements with color film is that resolution is not linear throughout the density range of film, especially print film. With print film resolution, which is basically measures as monochromatic density difference with split pairs differs greatly from dmin to dmax. In plain English the low density areas (low mids to shadows) can't record as much information as higher mid tone ranges where the dye clouds have their best ratio of density. High density areas of print film (highlights) quickly start to block up and also lose the ability to maintain split pairs. Print film, particularly low contrast ones like portait films might have a very long exposure range exceeding 12 stops, but the amount of actual information in the extremes becomes severely compromised. White noise is not information.

Color slide film is a little better in this regard thanks to it's higher density range. However, you still have the problem with the extremes losing information. Highlights in slide film consist of film stain (nothing). There is no information there.

Digital capture is far more linear in this respect because the sensors and processing are designed to be linear. Your final file might be 24-bit or your working space, but at sensor level bit depths are much higher. Much higher than any print film working beyond a 10 stop brightness range that's for sure.

I have 4k by 6k drum scans of the much heralded RG-25 and my 60D yields more information in a 20x30 print (especially luminance data) , and unlike the 60D file I have to thrash the RG-25 scan with de-noise filers to reduce grain and trade off information even more.

There's a reason pros before digital shot MF and LF, and that's because 35mm is a terrible format in regards to pulling information from, optically or with a drum scanner. Because somebody needs a desperate bone in the fight against digital and quotes anything they can find doesn't change how bad 35mm is in terms of commercial reproduction.