Camera Talk

I hope this is the correct location for this question.

My daughter recently found some exposed rolls of Kodak Supra 200. She is not sure when she took the pictures and the film is probably several years out of date. It has been hiding in the back of one of her dresser drawers at room temperatures.

Anyone care to offer a guess as to whether or not the film would have enough latent image left to consider sending it off for development?

George

It very likely will have images, yes. The color may now be off, but you'll probably be able to see whatever it was fairly clearly. I developed some ancient Kodacolor II film that a friend found in their dad's attic from sometime in the late 70s/early 80s; it had suffered through freezing winters and hot Texas summers out there, and still had images. Since her father had passed away, she was very grateful for the find. Give it a try, let us know how it works out...

Robert

I'll echo Robert's comments, and add a little. She will probably be very nicely surprised at what she finds there. I have developed film found in old cameras with excellent results even after three decades of sitting around.

Of course what *I* call "excellent" won't be what someone else may call excellent. But in all likelihood there will be images, and they'll be pictures that she took the trouble originally to record, so she'll probably be excited to see the scenes/people etc again.

Over time C41 film does deteriorate, primarily in colour shifting and in loss of detail. Some of this can be made up for much more easily these days than back in the days when only enlargers and darkrooms allowed prints from negatives. Once scanned, the negative's image can be adjusted for better colour, or -- as I have found with really old C41 -- for quite sharp contrasty pictures in b&w.

Whatever the amount of work you or she wants to do with it, it will most probably be worth the money getting them developed!

My experience with C-41 film: fog and increased grain is a bigger problem than image fading or color shift. Low ISO ages much better than higher ISO.

10 years old, ISO 100 - usually no problem at all, almost like fresh film

45 years old, ISO 400 - barely an image extracted from under the fog and grain (Kodacolor 400) - this was my extreme experience.

This is for film kept at room conditions in temperate weather. Humidity, heat = additional trouble.

She has good chances of getting useable images if the film is only several years old, ISO 200 and kept at room temp in a dry container. Make sure that she gets the negs back, so you have a chance to improve things with more careful scanning and postprocessing.

Thanks for the replies. We will get a roll developed and see what happens.

I have been using a Nikon 4000 scanner for a number of years (2001) and it has done an excellent job of restoring old faded slides and negatives. So between scanning and photoshop I suspect she may get some very decent results.

And yes, I suspect she will be surprised at what she finds on the film. With my memory, I always get a few surprises when I develop a roll of b&w that's been in the camera for several months.

George

Here's an example of what Philip was talking about, George. It was from a roll of Kodak Vericolor II I found in a point-and-shoot from Goodwill. The images looked to be from back in the late sixties to early seventies, so they were at least forty years old.


Found Film: Corrections Composite by P F McFarland, on Flickr

Upper Left is the original scan. Upper Right is after running it through PSE10 with the Smart Fix. Not much improvement, but now the image is clearer. Bottom Left is a B&W conversion using the Vivid Landscape filter. It's still quite a bit washed out, so in the Bottom Right frame, Lighten Shadows was zeroed out, Darken Highlights was set at +10, and Contrast was brought up +25.

Usable images can be made from old film.

PF

Nice set of corrections, Phil!

.

UPDATE

Thanks for recommending that I get a roll of film developed to see what we had.

I sent a roll of film to be developed through my local CVS. My mistake. I did not read the small print on the envelope which said "your negatives will not be retuned". But I did get a CD with 2048 x 1364 pixel scans and 4x6 prints. Some prints were greenish, some overexposed and some were quite good. The scans were probably scanned on a scanner which exposes and color corrects automatically as the scans were very good.

The pictures were taken in Acadia Nat'l Park in Maine In 2005. It is definately worth getting the rest of the rolls developed but I want the negatives returned. I am aware of Dwayne's Photo in Kansas but would like to hear of personal experiences with any other processers.

George

Good - so the images are there, that was the point.

I cannot help with processors in your area, but I would recommend a professional one, even if it charges a bit more. There is a better chance that they know what they are doing.

Dwayne's is good. Indie Film Lab (indiefilmlab.com) is one that has been supporting various new film initiatives lately; I haven't tried them out yet, but I mean to do that. I've used MPIX before; don't know if they're still doing it or not, but they were fine the last time I used them, a couple of years ago.

Or you could, believe it or not, do it yourself. I have; it's not very hard, but you need a cheap daylight tank, a box of the C41 powdered chemical kit (B&H and Freestyle sell it under different names), some opaque bottles to hold the mixed chemistry, and a small drinks cooler. Put hot water in the cooler a degree or two above the required temp (100.4F or something like that, so more like 103F), put the chemistry and the tank in the water for a few minutes to get it to temp, and then start developing -- the developer step being at temp is the most important part, after that, close is generally close enough.

Works just fine, but you might want to shoot another roll or two to do a test run before you try it out on valued rolls.

Or you can send it to Dwayne's. Or one of the other labs who are still around -- where are you located?

Robert