Topic: FP4 - how old is too old?

[Nigel]

My stepfather just came across this neat little pack of FP4 plus, with a free roll of Pan F! He thinks he bought it when FP4 plus first came out, which - according to the very interesting Ilford archive - was 1990.

It's been stored in text book, top of his wardrobe, conditions. Is it worth a go?



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[astrobeck]

Being it was on top of his wardrobe, and heat rises....but indoors in a temp controlled room might not be too bad.

I would definitely give it a go!  It's not going to do any good sitting in the box any longer.

Please share the results if you do try it.   

[sapata]

Nigel, I'd give a go for sure ...

This is a Kodak 1980 I precessed a few time ago...
http://making-the-noise.blogspot.com/search/label/kodak%20verichrome

I also have a couple of films expired in 1953 just waiting in the fridge for the right moment !

[Francois]

Definitely worth giving it a go. Free film is always good film 
(OK, in a slightly cheapskate way I admit).

The film's sensitivity should be in the neighborhood of EI32 by now... so expose accordingly and you should be OK.

[astrobeck]

Definitely worth giving it a go. Free film is always good film 
(OK, in a slightly cheapskate way I admit).

The film's sensitivity should be in the neighborhood of EI32 by now... so expose accordingly and you should be OK.

Do you have a table or calculation formula to share on how you arrived at that sensitivity number?
That would be a wonderful thing to have!   
I always just go by the seat of my pants on things like that, but would consider a table/formula if I had one.
 

[Francois]

I just use the 1 stop loss per 10 years of expiry rule.
I then divide it by months in order to have the precise EI... then I round it off to the nearest DX coding value... simple (took me a day to figure this one out). I tried it with a bunch of color film I have that was starting to go brownish. I was really surprised to see that a simple overexposure would get rid of it

If you check my contraption software suite, it includes a small program that automatically calculates it for you. The app is aptly called "Old Film"

[Nigel]

Francois - I checked 'old film' and indeed came up with ISO 32, very clever.

What is strange when I tried to check the figure for the Pan-F I put in June 1990 and ISO 50, it told me the film had not expired? 

[Francois]

I just tried it again and on mine it gives me EI 12...
I tried to reproduce the bug you came across and couldn't duplicate it...

The program reads the system clock to calculate the difference between the expiry date and the current date... only thing that could screw this up that I can see is if someone is using a computer which doesn't have the correct date on it...

When I get time, I'll try and review the code to make sure no gremlins creeped in.

[Nigel]

Thanks Francois, I'm going to have to wait for a very sunny day to use ISO 12 film!

[Francois]

I just thought I'd add about the Old film program: When you set the calendar, you don't need to set the day. I wrote it so that the film expiry date is set by the month number, not the day. If by accident you hit the "today" button on the calendar, this message will appear as the film would not be expired (which it wouldn't be)

The message is actually a generic error message command. Anything that goes wrong in that part of the routine will cause it to pop up...
Try it again to see... the code is pretty simple (though slightly confusing) in that segment... I had a hard time getting it working in the first place.