Old 4x5 FP4+ what to expect

[Gerard de Vrueh]

Hello,

Yesterday y shot a few pictures on 4x5 FP4+ with my selfbuild 4x5 inch camera. I developed the films in Finol (from moersch it's a pyro clone).

I thought the negs were very thin. Now i wonder if the age of the film may be part of that. The experency date of the film was 1999 and i have not kept it under ideal sucumstances. It was just in it's original pack in a box.

Does black and white film become less sensitive after a long time?

Of course may be its wrong exposure. but just trying to eleminate one of the possible couses.

Greetings GdV

[Cor]

Gerard,

I would expect a raised B+F (wouldn't be surprised if there was not much rise anyway) not a thin negative, I would look into exposure and processing..

Best,

Cor

[Robert Hughes]

I've shot and processed b&w film up to 50 years old that was still useable. Do a test show with a sheet per normal ISO rating and see what it looks like. If you've got base fog, shoot it at ISO 50 and pull process one stop.

[Gerard de Vrueh]

Hello Cor, Robert,

Thanks for the input. I think the exposure was the problem. I made two exposures and one came out better than the other. Also because i have no schutter on my home made card box 4x5 ich camera i do need to count correct. I can only work with long exposures and perhaps i will have to correct for schwartshield effect.

But the film base looked good enough with no extreme fogg.

I was quite thrilled with the scans i made (epson perfection 3200). I scanned the negative like a color negative 8 bit. I did this because the pyro gives a stain and i suppose is does contain sertain information you loose when you scan a pyro neg B+W only.

This gives a scan that has a strong red hue. You can lessen that and that is when the strange things happen. I could not believe it but my son who was standing next to me saw it to. I made a picture af som leaves, and those leaves actually look green on the scan. The first thing my son says "hey! have you been using color film? and can you develop that in B+W developer?".

I suspect that this is coincidence and that the pyro stain is beeing translated tot green in the scanning proces. But still it doesnt look tot bad:)

The picture itself is not interesting just a proof of concept that my camera works. There is still room for improvement...

Good by
Gerard

[Jim Noel]

SInce you are having to make only long exposures the most serious problem you will have with this film is underexposure. When times get long it is hard to over-expose. If my times are over a minute, I usually double the time with good success.
The moersch pyro developer, like many pyros developers, produces far less than stated film speed. I would begin with a film speed of 50 to calculate exposure.
Good luck,
Jim