Arista 400 Pro--expired eleven years ago

[jwc57]

I came across a can of bulk film, Arista 400 Professional film, marked "Made in England", with an expiration date of March 2000. I loaded it in the bulk loader and I was going to run a couple of rolls to see if it was anywhere near being Okay. (It is a can of film someone gave me and I forgot about it. It was in the back of the camera cabinet instead of the freezer where I thought it was, so it was stored at a constant temperature in the house, but wasn't "preserved".)

After reading some threads and posts on here, I thought I would ask a couple of questions....

What, if any, allowances should I make during exposure? For example, should I dial it in at ISO 800 instead of 400 to accommodate any loss of sensitivity?

How should I process it and what chemicals would you recommend? (The only fresh developer I have right now is Ilfosol 3 and D76---but, I'm wondering if something like Diafine would be better? I also have two packages of Dektol).


My thinking behind this is that if the a roll doesn't turn out, I should eliminate my errors instead of just writing off the film as "gone".

 

[wblynch]

That would be Ilford film (HP5?).

It's probably still very good but it's likely lost some speed and may have a bit of base fog. Try shooting it at 200.

Ilfosol 3 and D-76 should both work well. If it were me I would use a lower dilution (Ilfosol-3 at 1+9, D-76 at 1+1) and look for the quicker development time to keep base fog at a minimum.

 

[jwc57]

Thanks.

I went ahead and ran twelve frames...half at 400 and the other half at 800, just to see what would happen. No difference really between the two different speeds. I developed it with Ilfosol 3 at 1+9 and 6:30. It turned out contrasty and very grainy, but no fog.

I'm wondering if Xtol would give me better results.

I shot some 120 HP5 and used the same development as above. That seems to turn out really well. Of course, it wasn't 11 years old.