Oddly enough, I have a few rolls of frozen Ektar 25 from the mid 90s, found recently in a stash of other film. If I get around to shooting it I'll let folks know.Originally Posted by domaz
Oddly enough, I have a few rolls of frozen Ektar 25 from the mid 90s, found recently in a stash of other film. If I get around to shooting it I'll let folks know.
If you want to keep film for longer than ten years, then I would consider freezing. When film is manufactured the emulsion has a relative humidity level standard that has to be maintained. Too low and the emulsion cracks and to high it rots and excepts gasses that interact with the emulsion. There is a whole list of gases that really are quite common, if you want a list email me. Basically everything in the kitchen and the garage will effect the emulsion if the emulsion humidity gets to high. So seal your film no matter how you store it. Then the type of base is also consideration, acetate film base, emulsion cracking can occur but not so much of a problem. Estar or polyestar based film, well have you ever developed a roll of film that looks like a spring that cannot be straitened? well that means too dry or low humidity. Freezing very much can change the humidity level of the emulsion of your film emulsion, which you really want to avoid.
Thanks. Another thing to consider. I must have read a hundred pages of threads advocating freezing in double bagged ziplocks and there was only one or two people who warned against it. I'm going to re-think this, particularly since I have no plans to store a decade's worth of film. As a neophyte in LF, I can't justify buying a ton of film at this point.
I recently purchased some out of date Quickload velvia 100 which had been refrigerated. The lab recommended I store it in the freezer. I removed a couple of sheets from the frozen stock and tested recently. I had it processed and everything looked normal.
As other people have mentioned, it needs to be brought back to room temperature before shooting.
Ziploc bags are a very poor choice. Air and humidity will get in after a matter of days, not years. You want to double-bag with something which can be completely heat-sealed. If you do use ziplocs, run a tacking iron below the zip level to heat-weld the polyethylene completely. A simple freeze-dry bagging device for dried fruit etc can be had for about a hundred bucks; it will vacuum out most of the air at the same time, and automatically tack the plastic. The best material is a laminate of polyethylene to
aluminum foil, which can be obtained from some archival suppliers in rolls.
I just two days ago made the same move. My film was crowding out my beer space (actually, my wife wanted my film out of her #2 reefer, which she's been sharing with me for a couple of years). Bought a little 2.5 cu ft Frigidaire dorm unit at Lowes for $136. Has a full range thermostat control. Heck, it even has a tiny little freezer compartment big enough for four ice trays that I ended up using for batteries. Perfect size for my shop/darkroom, fits easily under the bench my enlargers are on, runs quietly. Enough room left over for a six pack, too. Not frost free, but it's in an air conditioned space.
For larger film storage space I suppose a small chest freezer would be good, but until you get up in the upper price ranges they probably won't be frost-free, which might be a concern depending on the humidity where you live.
I have a 25 cubic foot refrigerator freezer in Los Angeles to hold my film on the west coast. I only have a 18.2 cubic foot refrigerator on the east coast and I only use a small part of the 5.13 cubic foot freezer for film.
Steve
Nothing beats a great piece of glass!
I leave the digital work for the urologists and proctologists.
Check the operating cost; I think you'll find the dorm fridges are very expensive to operate relative to their size. If space permits, a small chest freezer might well be a better choice. If you want to keep temps higher than freezing, homebrewing shops sell a controller that will keep your freezer at above freezing temps.
The 2.5 cu ft dorm unit I just bought is rated at $28 per year (using national average electrical rates). 5-7 cu ft chest freezers all fall in the $26-$30/year range, so their operating cost per cu ft per year is better. However, in my crowded darkroom space was key, and the dorm unit slips under the enlarger table, adding nothing to my workspace problems. Plus I couldn't really use the top of a chest freezer for storing anything, because I'd have to move stuff off it every time I wanted to open the lid. Somebody mentioned efficiency because you don't lose cold air every time you open a chest freezer like you do opening a door unit. This is true, but I only open a film reefer maybe once every couple of days at most.
If you have the space, then a 5-7 cu ft chest freezer (around $250 or so for a manual defrost unit) would probably be the overall long-term cheaper solution. If space is critical and you can live with only 2-3 cu ft of film, a small under-counter unit at about half the initial cost of a freezer works great. They both have similar warranties, and I'd expect the long term reliability of their little compressors to be about equal.
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