Freezers for Film and Paper

[Andre Noble]

The amonut of traditional materials being discontinued as of late is shocking.

Thiking of getting a really cold freezer and stockpiling. Anyone doing this? W hat type of freezer are you using? How cold are you storing? How cold does free zer have to be to keep color film, color paper say 10-15 years in good condition ?

Thanks for any tid-bits

[Carl Weese]

I've read that b&w materials can keep indefinitely at 0 degrees F. But ultra high-speed films will fog from cosmic rays even in the freezer (really!) and color materials may not be as permanent even when frozen. Negative film and color paper will likely be longer-lived than chrome film simply because minor color shifts caused by different aging of color layers can be dealt with in the printing proces

[Kevin Crisp]

There are prior threads on this subject. There is a BIG difference between freezing and refrigerating. From my own experience with TRI- X, even after ten years FROZEN the film is perfectly usable. There is an extremely small change in B+F. Chest style freezers are remarkably cheap these days at the big discounters. Wish I had room for one.

[Michael Kadillak]

Came to the same conclusion. Everything I read indicated that freezing for B&W film was not a problem for 10 years plus. I had some paper that had been frozen for a couple of years and had some serious fog, but I did not test it before I stored it. May have been bad from the get go. I am not as concerned about photographic papers as much as large format films as these papers can be used by all formats and appear to not be subject to the same manufacturing risks.

I got a 17 cubic foot chest freezer from Lowes for about $200 because of the fact that every time you open up the front door of a conventional stand up freezer, the cold air falls out of the bottom like a waterfall. With a chest freezer that is not the case. However, you can easily fall victim to piling stuff on top of other stuff and lose track of what you have. My wife got me to write out my inventory and number bags so I know exactly what I have and when I put it into the freezer. Good Luck.

[Andre Noble]

How 'bout the merits of regular freezer vs. deep freezers, like used in many research labs?

[Walter Beckham]

I have several boxes of frozen Tri-X from l989 that I'm still using. Also, some Kodak Studio Proof(POP) from, I guess, the mid-eighties, that prints just fine. I just take some out of the box and put what I don't need back into the freezer. Works!

[Ellis Vener]

Just don't freeze Polaroid (or Fuji) instant imaging materials.