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Michael Wainfeld
14-Jul-2009, 17:47
Just noticed this in AA's "The Negative". I keep my exposed film holders in black plastic envelopes, ~70 deg, ~40% humidity, but sometimes don't get to them for a week or two.
Mike

Juergen Sattler
14-Jul-2009, 18:27
Don't worry about it - I had exposed film in holders for months before I developed it and everything was fine/

Chauncey Walden
14-Jul-2009, 18:27
For a neighbor a couple of weeks back, I developed a roll of VP film that had been sitting in the camera since it was exposed 40 years ago. No problems except maybe a slight loss of contrast.

Robert Hughes
18-Jul-2009, 10:05
A couple years ago I bought an old Auricon 16mm movie camera with detached 400' Mitchell magazine - full of exposed film in the takeup reel. What was it? I developed about 20' of it to find out - it was a darktown street parade from about 1968 (no racist slant intended, I believe the term was still in use back then).

While inspecting with a loupe I could see a billboard advertising NBC's coverage of the upcoming presidential election - and a couple parade queens were sitting on the hood of a brand new '68 sports car. What a great find!

Bjorn Nilsson
18-Jul-2009, 11:30
In a perfect world, with perfect circumstances ... But not even AA was perfect.
Now what he says is true. But it's very difficult to measure the difference between negs developed sub-72 hours or a year or even much more and in some cases you can get away with multiple years. (Some of the pictures from a swedish expedition to travel to the north pole by balloon some 120 years ago were rescued and successfully developed some 70-100 years later, even though the development was made by specialists. Ehh, the balloon took a dive and the participants became food for polar bears. So don't try that at home folks... :) )
So is there any conclusion to this? Well, try to get your film properly developed as soon as possible, but you don't have to break your back in order to have it done. The film will not go bad before the cream for your coffee gets sour.

//Björn

John Kasaian
20-Jul-2009, 14:04
Exposed film, like red wine, can sometimes improve with age. Or it can just get nasty. :D

Wade D
21-Jul-2009, 03:37
Exposed film, like red wine, can sometimes improve with age. Or it can just get nasty. :D
In my case it got nasty. I found a roll of FP4 that had been in the garage for 20+ years. I didn't expect much but developed it anyway. Fog city! Barely an image. But that's what happens when you lose a roll and it sits in a hot garage that long.:rolleyes:

Jiri Vasina
21-Jul-2009, 03:57
I try to develop within a few days after exposure - for BW film.

If I know I will not develop for a longer time, I unload them into a box and put them in a freezer. This is also what I do for all my color films - those I develop only rarely, so wait until I have enough of them to mix the chemistry.

So far I have not had any problems that I could relate to prolonged keeping undeveloped...

Jiri

Frank Petronio
21-Jul-2009, 04:45
It is more a matter of keeping up with your work than any technical concern, I wouldn't worry about "months" or even a couple of years.

sgelb
24-Jul-2009, 16:59
For a neighbor a couple of weeks back, I developed a roll of VP film that had been sitting in the camera since it was exposed 40 years ago. No problems except maybe a slight loss of contrast.


ive seen this myself.. someone at the lab picking up 2 rolls of 120 from like 1960 which had been shot and not processed, were sitting in a box or something.. the contact sheets looked A-Ok.. maybe a tad flat.. pretty amazing and a real hats off to kodak technology!

SamReeves
26-Jul-2009, 09:34
Agreed with the above. Sometimes I forget for about three weeks, and they turn out fine.

Drew Wiley
26-Jul-2009, 17:09
Some of my work gets developed the next day, some the next year! With most LF
films this doesn't seem to be a problem if the exp film is stored sensibly. However,
very high speed films sometimes used in MF or 35mm cameras are subject to
fogging and contrast loss much more easily, allegedly from cosmic rays; so I wouldn't leave a nominal ASA3200 film undeveloped for long.

Ron Marshall
26-Jul-2009, 17:54
That reminds me of Gary Winogrand, who had something like 3000 unprocessed rolls on hand when he passed away.