Mystery film development

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Tom Gardner - 29 Mar 2004 15:54 GMT

As I have been building my new darkroom, buying new equipment and
consolidating everything that has been scattered around the house for years
I make new discoveries every day. I just ran across 6 rolls of exposed bulk
rolled film, most likely some flavor of Kodak B&W. It is at least 15 years
old. I'm thinking of HC-110B for 6 minutes unless you have a better plan.
I don't expect much but there might be something interesting. I used to
loan a loaded fully auto camera, like a Canon A-1 to neighborhood kids and
they would come up with some of the coolest images with no instructions
other than: "Turn this until it looks good and push this and thumb this."
You would be amazed at what the lack of preconception can produce. Anyway,
are the latent images salvageable? ...on whatever film it could be?

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Mark in Maine - 29 Mar 2004 16:35 GMT

I would snip a few inches from the end of each roll, and develop them
in HC110B for 6min, then based on the results decide how you want to
develop the balance of each roll. This will also tell you what the
film is.

Mark

>As I have been building my new darkroom, buying new equipment and
>consolidating everything that has been scattered around the house for years
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>You would be amazed at what the lack of preconception can produce. Anyway,
>are the latent images salvageable? ...on whatever film it could be?

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Mike King - 29 Mar 2004 16:47 GMT

With Kodak films you can sometimes make a good guess as to the film type by
examining the leaders. Tri-X leaders are gray, Plus-X purple-ish blue, Tmax
almost copper metallic on the emulsion side. If you processed in Diafine or
AB-55 (Cachet last time I looked) you won't need to worry about processing
times.

--
darkroommike

----------

> As I have been building my new darkroom, buying new equipment and
> consolidating everything that has been scattered around the house for years
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> You would be amazed at what the lack of preconception can produce. Anyway,
> are the latent images salvageable? ...on whatever film it could be?

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Richard Knoppow - 02 Apr 2004 02:00 GMT

> With Kodak films you can sometimes make a good guess as to the film type by
> examining the leaders. Tri-X leaders are gray, Plus-X purple-ish blue, Tmax
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> Anyway,
> > are the latent images salvageable? ...on whatever film it could be?

But it might also be color film. A clip test will probably
show the edge markings, which will identfy the film whether
B&W or color.

Signature

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@ix.netcom.com

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Nicholas O. Lindan - 29 Mar 2004 17:05 GMT

> just ran across 6 rolls of exposed bulk rolled film, most likely some
> flavor of Kodak B&W. I'm thinking of HC-110B for 6 minutes

If it is 35mm then HC-110 is pretty raunchy stuff IMO, unless you
have raunchy images to go with.

In D-76 olde Tri-X was 8 min. and Plus-X was 6 min. In D-76
1:1 the times are 10 and 8.5 minutes.

If it were me I would use D76 1:1 for 10 minutes. The PX will
come out a 1/2-3/4 grade hard - NBD and better than underdeveloped
TX.

> It is at least 15 years old.

You may want to add a splash (a carefully controlled amount) of
benztriazole to keep the fog down. 30ml/l (1oz/qt) of a 2%
solution works OK and doesn't seem to alter development time.

Signature

Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio nolindan@ix.netcom.com
Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/

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BertS - 09 Apr 2004 19:40 GMT

> As I have been building my new darkroom, buying new equipment and
> consolidating everything that has been scattered around the house for years
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> You would be amazed at what the lack of preconception can produce. Anyway,
> are the latent images salvageable? ...on whatever film it could be?

A split developer like Diafine would be my choice for an unknown film. Or
split D23, if you homebrew. That way you don't have to worry about development
time being off.

Bert

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