Home dev help (old used film)

ipodnano

ipodnano

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Lee
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Hello guys.

I have developed a couple of rolls of film myself but am still a newbie. I have recently found a old roll of agfapan 400 that has been used but I never got around to developing it. It could be upto 20 years old.

The question is, when I come to developing such an old film, how should I adjust development times? I am using FD10 dev.

Any help much appreciated.
 
I'm just going to say, Hi Lee, and that's a tricky one, to give it a quick bounce. I've never heard of that particular developer. I seem to remember that Peak are pretty good at devving old film but when I sent them a roll of Tri-X that had sat in my sister's Box Brownie since about 1950, only one frame achieved the approximate shape of the person (enough for me to be convinced it was my Grandmother). :( There are even more specialist labs if it's a film of value to you (doesn't sound like it!). Someone else might be along in a bit with better advice...
 
Have a look at this blog post: http://foundfilm.livejournal.com/16982.html

The guy suggests using a high concentration of HC-110.

I've also seen people suggest stand development for old film, but I'm not sure about that...it's seems it could produce a very low contrast negative.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.
 
With a film that was exposed 20 years ago, the latent image will have deteriorated and might even be missing entirely. Some films lose their latent image in weeks rather than years.

Personally, I would go for stand development as being the most likely to produce an image of some sort. You are not going to get a top quality image no matter what you do.
 
I've stand developed old film in Rodinal before now with reasonable success.
 
Thanks guys. Yes I have heard good things about standing in Rodinal. I will have to think about getting a bottle.
 
I've dev'd 1960s HP3 in FD10. Cant comment on Agfa films.

From memory I think I just ran it through as I would HP5 and although there was a bit of base fog, I did get some usable images.
 
In the end I used FD10 as thats all I had. I diluted to 1-14 for 12 mins. The frames that came out did so well, but if you see another post, only three frames were developed but thats more likely camera error.
 
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