Old transparency still usable?

dobla · 2006-04-13T11:48:08+00:00

Hallo liebe Forumnutzer. Bitte steinigt mich nicht gleich für meine Frage: Ich habe von einem Bekannten einen alten Farb DIA-Rollfilm geschenkt bekommen, d...

dobla

Hello, fellow forum users. Please don’t stone me just yet for asking this: A friend gave me an old colour slide roll film that I might still like to use: FujiChrome RDP II, expired 4/2000 – so exactly six years past its use-by date! The film probably hasn’t been stored too badly, but it hasn’t been in the fridge the whole time. I know that with black-and-white film, you can still get good results if you increase the exposure by one or two stops, depending on its age. But I don’t want to suffer from overexposure with the film. Does anyone have any experience with this? And I’ve heard that the films often end up with a colour cast because the ‘colours’ don’t age at the same rate? Maybe it’s easier just to throw the film away, but I’m still curious ;-) Bye!

mephisto

Hi Dobla! Whether the film is still any good – well, to be honest, no one can tell you that for sure. But it’s worth a try; sometimes you get the craziest images, or it might still be OK. If you do give it a go, only do so if you don’t need to capture anything important, like nature, for example. Otherwise, straight into the bin. Best wishes, mephisto ;)

dobla

And perhaps increase the exposure by 1–2 stops, or just as normal?

MirkoBoeddecker

...and don’t forget how much it costs to get an E6 roll film developed, and whether, given that it costs €6–9 to have it developed at a specialist lab, it might not be better to use a fresh roll of film after all ;) Mirko

Gast

Hello, I would strongly advise against overexposure. Just out of curiosity, I recently exposed a roll of Agfachrome CTx 200 that had expired about eight years ago; the ‘results’ were worse than expected. Whilst all the subjects were still recognisable, the overall density – and therefore the contrast – had decreased significantly. All the shots therefore looked slightly overexposed and lacklustre. It might be possible to counteract this effect with push development, but it certainly isn’t worth the effort. So just expose it normally and see what happens. Roll films generally last a bit longer than 35mm film anyway, because when rolled up they don’t come into such close contact with the oxidising effects of atmospheric oxygen. Regarding the cost of development: I recommend taking the film to one of the well-known drugstore chains; ‘dm’ is particularly good value at €1.95 for E-6 development. Regards Thomas G.

mephisto

Hi Thomas! I agree that the film is still quite good, but there’s no 100% guarantee. As for exposure, I’d just use standard settings or perhaps employ underexposure by one stop. Developing is also cheaper at discount shops, especially E6. I prefer to perform all my own development, but then again, I don’t have any slide film. Best regards, mephisto

dobla

First of all, to everyone: Thanks for the really good tips – this is a brilliant forum! I think I’ll try using normal exposure, as Thomas suggested, and then get it developed at a discount store like dm; I can afford the 2 EUR. To give you a bit more context: I can get some more film (about 4 or 5 rolls) from the person who gave me this one, so it might be worth giving it a go. Thanks again for your help.

dobla

Hi! For those who are interested, here’s one of the results:

Taken with a Seagull 4A-107 and close-up lenses, using the transparency mentioned above. The development cost €1.95 at my trusted specialist retailer :) PS: It’s not the Seagull that has such a small depth of field; that was created by the close-up lens, but I still thought the shot wasn’t bad. Best regards, Daniel