greg_miller10

Keep your film in an air tight zip lock bag and allow to come to room temperature before opening to avoid condensation. Freezing your film will greatly reduce the ravages of time.

 

all the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International.

If your film is marked "Kodak Verichrome" and not "Kodak Verichrome Pan" it will be pre approximately 1952. If it does not have the Pan designation and it's important to you leave it to the professionals. If it is pan film then you will likely get some kind of something off it with traditional processing methods though an experienced provider who has a concern for their customers images will be your better option.

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Good advice by all. I'll just add that 110 film has had a notoriously bad shelf life. We can only speculate as to the reason why. We do not that film...all film suffers from oxidization. This is especially true with undeveloped film. When we receive roll films of a given brand and type vs its cassette counterpart, invariably the roll film is of far superior quality. This because the elements have been displaced by the tight wrapping of the film which does not happen in a film cassette. We also know that film will fog in from the edges to the center. This leaves 110 at two disadvantages. It is narrow and it is in a cassette. Still this does not seem to account for the fact that the 110 film is considerably worse then the 126 and 35mm of the same vintage. We don't know but do suspect that the 110 cassette is not as impervious to the elements as 126 and 35mm cassettes.

 

Bottom line...Our success rate on salvaging a recognizable image from properly exposed Kodacolor II 110 film is only about 60 to 70 percent while across the board, all film types in our success is closer to 90 percent. At best what you can expect is a very grain and harsh but fully recognizable B&W image. Even after grain reduction they're still pretty funky. To attempt color with these films, unless stored in cool conditions is likely an exercise in futility. We generally only recommend that a customer proceed with this, given the expense, if the images may be of great importance. That said you would not be charged unless we salvaged recognizable images. It must be noted though that recognizable does not mean good. Never with 110 kodacolor II could we have ever classified the results as good.

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Thanks for the plug Jeff. We actually use a V750 pro because we wanted the faster scan speed and the slightly higher quality scan. We handle it in a similar manner as you describe. If you're not going to drive yourself nutz you need to create a photoshop action to seperate out the frames once scanned. We also have had a laser cut carrier manufactured for us because precise placement of the disc on the flatbed is extremely important for this to work. All that said....we'd love to do the job for you. We're very good at it.

 

Cheers

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

We use an epson v750 pro with a laser cut carrier to register the film precisely each time. The entire disc is then scanned and the frames seperated out using photoshop actions (this where the precise placement of the film becomes necessary). This scanner allows a 6400 dpi scan which is plenty big for disc film and our lower priced scans are only 2400 dpi and they don't show any digital artifacting in a 4x5 print. Once scanned all frames are then digitally density and color corrected, degrained, sharpened and a small bit of spotting is done. Anyone can do it but whether it's worth the time and effort to do it well may depend on your patients.

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Was the quality from Dwayne's actually poor? My experience with Dwayne's is that they keep their old machinery very well calibrated and will produce great results from good negatives. I'll say that even though in some respects they're our competition. Just because they're big doesn't mean they're bad.

 

Cheers

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

C-22 process requires a formaldehyde pre hardner in order to harden the films emulsion before it is processed. Beyond that it is not radically different from c-41. Without it the emulsion will fall of the base of the film. If you do not have the hardner you can develop it in color at a much lower temperature but you will still get reticulation in the emulsion though it will still likely adhere to the base. The other option is to develop the film into B&W....in fact it's often the best approach (but not always) though I've never seen a reasonably good formula offered in any forum for this.

 

Now I'm sounding cocky.....I'll get just a little more cocky now. There are a few of us in the business of developing old film. Some of us are actually very good at it. Some aren't but there are even a couple of dabblers out there (at least one anyway) that offer the service and do good work. I don't think any of us are getting rich on this business. Our company would charge you far more then your "whopping 27 dollars" but we will also do far better work then you will be able to do yourself. Even our scanning techniques are not typical (film type dependent) There is a good deal to be said for the experience of thousands of rolls (we develop 200 to 400 rolls a month) and a genuine concern to be producing the top possible quality. Some of us offering this service actually do understand the value that these films have to many of the families that send in work and genuinely do want to produce the best possible results.

 

Sorry for the curt letter. I do understand that it's easy to imagine that that the suppliers of this service have a captive audience but there truly is a good deal of competition at this point (7 I'm aware of) and as the top dollar provider for this service we can only rely on having our customers understand that we are doing something for our earnings.

 

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Perhaps worthy of note. When we develop our Kodacolor X it is developed into color but seldom do we deliver color images to our customers. The reason for developing old film into color when possible is two fold. One - the grain structure of the dye image is not nearly as aggressive of that of the silver image thus allowing us to make more pleasant prints with a more attractive tonality. The other reason and the more important one is that as these old roll films age they fog in from the edges. This is apparent in the posted images and will become more and more obvious as they are brought up to normal contrast levels (unlike the low contrast images shown here). When developed into color the blue sensitive dye layer has not been effected by this fogging nearly to the degree the other two dye layers have. In scanning we use extreme physical color filtration to isolate this dye layer and then it is again isolated if necessary in the channels menu in photoshop. In the end as would have been the case with the images show here developed in Rodinal (which are quite good so the film was likely in very good shape) ours would likely have been unrecognizable from newly purchased and shot B&W film. But then again Paul has saved himself 200 dollars with his 5 rolls and had his curiosity satisfied.

 

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Curled, folded, rolled and crumpled film will have a "memory". Soaking them for a few minutes will likely help to eliminate this but caution must be taken as some negatives will have developed some minor but not seen issues with mold and this will make the emulsion water soluble. You can also carefully and slowly bend them into a new position. Depending on the condition of the acetate this can be done more aggressively or with more care. If the negative is folded into a "V" shape, set it into an upright "A" and add a small amount of weight to the peak. It should, over days or hours begin to flatten. As it does so you can add a bit more weight.

 

If soaking does work do as the other suggested and use a wetting solution to prevent water spotting. I also highly recommend using distilled water in your wetting solution and then no wiping or squeegeeing will be necessary to completely eliminate water marks. Providing that the negatives are not so dirty that they quickly dirty your wetting solution.

 

Good luck with it

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Hello Aaron. Contrary to popular opinion a new exposure shot on an old film at the suggested ISO will not render a better image then old exposures made when the film was new. We have experienced films that have absolutely no sensitivity to light anymore but yet we are able to pull recognizable images from the original exposures. We had one customer that had accidently shot an old roll that she found in her closet that dated back to the 1960s. Her new exposures where holiday shots from Mexico. Bright out door stuff with plenty of light. When the film was developed we could see the faintest outline of her holiday shots. Dominating the images was a drunken diner party circa the 1960s.....it was wonderful stuff. Also, by nature in loading our motion picture film magazines there is a tail of film that sits out in full light. Often we develop images off of these tails that by natural belief should be completely light fogged. The light had no effect at all.

 

Anyway to answer your question.......if the film exposure area was blank and you do have edge numbers in the rebate then no proper exposures where taken on this roll. Often times this is why these films get put away and not developed. The photographer may have realized that they did something wrong and instead of throwing the film out, it gets set aside for possible future consideration.

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

The Ilford will likely give you satisfactory results. The Kodak, because of it's age and the fact the packages have been opened will likely render an image but not a quality one. Had the packaging not been opened the film, though still not the best to use, would have been in much better condition. One of the biggest factors on the longevity of undeveloped film is it's exposure to oxygen. i.e. A given film in roll form vs. the same film in a cassette (35mm) will have approximately triple the shelf life due to the fact the tight wind on the roll film has displaced and protected the roll from oxidization.

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Anything Kodacolor pre mid seventies will be c-22 though Kodacolor II is C-41. The only two Kodacolors that are c-22 are Kodacolor with no suffix and Kodacolor-x. And yes...if put through c-41 at spec temp the emulsion will fall off. At lower temperatures you can coax it to stay on but expect the emulsion to be reticulated. We still have the appropriate hardner for this film.

 

cheers

It depends on how important the film is to you. We do it but we charge a lot of money for it. That said, we know what we're doing, have the experience of thousands of rolls, put a lot of time and effort into it and we don't get paid if we do not salvage recognizable images from your film - so we have a definite stake in doing a proper job of it. Not to mention that we have a love for this type of work and recognize the privilege of developing these lost and found time capsules. For details you can see our website and give us a call

 

 

www.filmrescue.com

 

 

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International.

In our experience undeveloped color negative film has stood the test of time a good deal better then undeveloped color reversal films. Even more significant is that roll film has stood up far better then films in cassettes such as 35mm. This due to the fact that the oxygen is displaced form the surface of the film due to the tight wind. Temperature is of course, also important. The cooler the better, though even frozen film will fade to some degree over time....but a good long time. If your 120 film from 2001- 2005 had been stored in a refrigerator you should be fine to shoot with them though I might be a little more leery of the earlier mentioned film. If the early mentioned film were 35mm I definitely recommend proceeding with caution.

 

All the best

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Your film is not old enough to justify altering the process in any significant way. To do so would truly be a shot in the dark without doing a clip test. It is only when we are dealing with B&W films older then about 15 to 20 years that any kind of more extreme steps are taken in the development of the film....even then such steps are often not necessary as the problems are often not significant to the point that they can not be dealt with in digital post.

 

Hope that's of some help

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

What about all that glare coming off the musician's personality? Forget all that extraneous gear. Filters will do nothing for you that you can't do in PS and flash will kill that nightclubbing mood, let alone destroy the mood for the people around you and draw a lot of unwanted attention to yourself. Like the other guy said......Fast lens, fast film or low noise high iso camera.

As recommended by the American Cinematographers handbook the only cleaner that should ever touch your lens is good cheap absolutely pure breath. And those are not inexpensive lenses on a motion picture camera. It's cheap and very effective. Lens cleaners are a bit of a scam and should be avoided not only because they contain mild detergents you also always end up with far to much of it on your lens which means you have to wipe it far more then you should.

 

For the record....you should do your very best to clean your lens as unoften as possible.

 

Cheers

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

While the EOS 5D is a very capable camera you might want to consider something like the far less expensive Sony R1 which does have a live finder and a full size sensor. Just a thought, but I can't help but agree with the other guy that says get yourself a photographer and leave the pilot of fly the plane.

 

Cheers

 

 

Greg

We are in a similar position. I've listed a Fuji SFA on e-bay three times now with a 1 dollar reserve. No takers. The enlargers will do far better but still...don't expect to get anything like what you paid for them. Right now our SFA is a plant stand. I have a poinsettia from 2 Christmas ago that I keep alive on top of it. There's some kind of irony there I think.

 

Good luck

 

Cheers

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

You need to consider how important the film is to you. 110 film has stood the test of time very poorly. We suspect that it's due to the narrow gauge of the film. Our experience has been that film age fogs from the edge to the center. 110 is narrow and the center is much closer then with other films. Still...it leaves us a bit baffled on how poorly it often does turn out when it is beyond its expiry date. Also suspect is the cassette itself. Film oxidizes over time and if the cassette is poorly sealed then the loosely wrapped film inside of the cassette is more prone to this effect. Perhaps 110 films were not sealed as well as 126 films....we have no real way to test this but 126 films of the same brand and vintage come out far far better then 110. I'd recommend that you try one film at Dwayne's Photo and see if you're happy with the results. Though Dwayne's does nothing to compensate for the age of a given film, my experience has been that their machines are well maintained and well calibrated, and the operators seem to know what they're doing. Something that can not always be said for many local photo finishers. If the results are good then send them the other two. If not you can give us a call and discuss your other, though more pricey, options.

 

Cheers

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

This is an issue that we struggled over a long time. We tried all sorts of methods of getting decent scans from Kodak Disc Film. What we had hoped to do is as one of the posters has suggested here, was shoot them with a digicam with a macro lens and then convert them in PS. While this was an efficient approach the results were less then stellar. The problem wasn't in the quality of the digicam image but in the neg/pos conversion in photoshop. Though there is a way to do a high quality inversion in photoshop it was painstakingly time consuming. Doing a simple inversion using the inversion tool would always produce what I call "lipstick reds"...that is a over saturated false color red. While you could pull this back using the individual red channel in the saturation tint tool, it was never quite right. To do it properly involved creating a mask for each and every disc film that would be layered on top of the image before inversion...big headache. In the end we got the best results using a high res flatbed scanner and a laser cut template to block out the extraneous light and register the film precisely on the scanner. Now this did of course involve creating a bunch of actions in photoshop to select out the frames that circle the hub (also a big headache but once it's done you don't have to do it again). Once the film is scanned it is then color corrected and run through degraining software. The results with good quality negatives is a small step up from a well calibrated vintage disc film printer with a good operator (call dwaynes photo) and a big step up with overexposed, flashed out and underexposed negatives. I don't really have a lot of issues with explaining this procedure as, though we do offer the service, it's not a huge money maker.

 

cheers

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Hello Rita

 

First off thanks so much to the fellow who mentioned our business and commented on our abilities. Kodacolor II was the first C-41 film produced by Kodak. It's vintage will be the late seventies or very early 80s. If it was pre 1975 (approx.) it would be marked Kodacolor x. If it was pre 1963 it would be straight Kodacolor. Your film is very old and with conventional C-41 development it may yield a very distressed low contrast image or nothing at all. Keep in mind, your film is decades beyond it's best before date. On our website we have samples of Kodacolor II developed by several different methods. You might want to have a look.

 

 

 

Cheers

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International

Hello Denis

 

The problem with shooting and developing film this old is that over time film will loose a degree of its sensitivity to light. So much so that we've experience very old film that has been mistakenly opened in the camera in full light and still have developed pictures from them with no apparent effect at all to the recent complete exposure. Strange but true. The problem is that you can have no idea how much to compensate other then by testing. It will all depend on the film type (rolls come out far better then cassettes), whether the rolls were sealed and protected from oxygen and what kind of temperatures it has seen in its history. In our experience humidity has had little ill effect on very old film. We have found that with customers that have found film in very damp but cool basements the results can often be stellar. Unfortunately, in this business we are only as good as our development procedures and do not give out development information. Good luck with your film.

 

Cheers

Greg Miller

Film Rescue International

Oh....and also worth mention....This film will not pre-date the 1990s. If so it would have the "Kodacolor" designation.

Hello Renny

 

Being Film Rescue, I have a lot of experience with Film Rescue. When we have a customer call us with similar circumstances as yours we will first try to determine how important the film is to the customer. Most often with any older Kodak Gold film (vs. Kodacolor Gold) we will recommend that you find a reputable local developer that is willing to take a little extra care with the film and a close eye on their video color corrector. In most cases this will yield decent results. Some may actually have color correction channels programmed into their printers to deal with slightly distressed film. If you know that the film has spent a good deal of time in the "attic" then perhaps we will be your best option. You would be given a choice with this situation to either take the safest route - developing the film leaving the much more resilient silver content in tact or if color is important the film would then be developed in AN-6 high contrast color aerial film developer. In either case the film will be worked on digitally before printing. As you present your case here I'd simply recommend that you find a decent local lab that has their customers concerns in mind. Worst case scenario, if prints do come out very poorly you can send them to us to be corrected to the best of our ability. Hope that helps.

 

 

 

cheers

 

Greg Miller

 

Film Rescue International