Perhaps this is not really the right forum to discuss lab processed film, but I can't thank Ilford enough.
I've just had some FP4+ & HP5+ 120 films back from the Ilford Lab Direct (Mobberley) which was exposed in 2003 and stored ('archived') in a bedroom wardrobe until now. In total I shot eleven rolls on my Mamiya 645 for a project, which at the time seemed so significant that I wanted to do it justice and I planned to process the film myself. Time passed, the significance of the project diminished and my interest waned. Essentially I forgot about the film and couldn't justify the cost of commercially processing it all until the point arrived where I felt the aggro associated with developing film exposed ten years previously stopped me in my tracks.
In a guilt strewn moment a couple of weeks ago I called the Ilford Lab, explained the situation and forced myself to put the films in the post - write the guilt strewn note "I exposed this film 11 years ago and only now have got round to processing it...".
Today I got the film back, I don't know if they applied any magic to the process but the negs look fine to me. Most surprising was there's no obvious sign of any fogging at all across any of the frames. My previous experience with colour transparency film of a similar vintage showed obvious fogging along the edges of most of the rolls (presumably light getting past the lip on the spool ends or the backing paper not tightly wound enough).
So a big thank you to Ilford for making such stable films and to the Ilford Lab for processing it so well.
I plan to put some of the shots into a Photo Essay soon - but with so many to edit, upload and sort-out it might take me a few days.
John.
