Old Film

[BobBill]

I have some exposed 620, 120 rolls, some from the 30s Mom had stashed in a drawer.

I am curious, but leery, to say the least, about attempting to develop (all BW)

I use HC110 and Ilford developers mostly.

Any practical comments from someone who did same?

 

[charjohncarter]

Fog is a potential problem so HC-110 is a good choice. I've always over developed like double. Even in the rare instance that the film is over developed you will still be able to get something usable with scanning. Good luck, the 30s is a long time to wait for development though. A lot depends on how they were stored. If they were in a plastic camera all this time, I've found that light has some how hit the film. Maybe it is IR leaking in.

This one was in the camera about 50 years.

50+ year old Verichrome by carter3john, on Flickr

 

[Bill Clark]

White picket fence and the automobile looks like a Chevrolet from late 50's early 60's.

Time will tell how many digital files survive this long!

Gotta go, Leave it to Beaver is on in a few minutes and it takes a minute or two for the tubes to warm up with my black & white T.V.

 

[bsdunek]

Yep, looks like a 1960 Chev - that would be 55 years ago. Not a bad result for all those years.

 

[Timmyjoe]

I just developed some Plus-X from the early 1960's. Used Rodinal, 100:1 and stand processed it for one hour. It's amazing that you can still get images from something shot so long ago. I found the stand processing did a better job with the fogging than just straight processing in Rodinal.

 

[mfogiel]

Look at this: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2015/01/31-rolls-of-ww2-film/

 

[wblynch]

HC-110 is a great developer for this.

I have also heard that it helps to reduce the temperature of the chemicals when processing old film.

The oldest I did myself was from 1959 and it came out usable. I was able to get nice pictures by scanning and applying photoshop adjustments.

Good luck.