Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Question for you photo pros....

I have several dozen rolls of undeveloped 35mm film that was taken during the late 70s to early 80s, they have been stored in the house and in a zippered camera bag stuffed into a dark cabinet.

Do you all believe this film will be good after all of these years? I was thinking about trying a single roll first but thought I gather your thoughts first.

TYVM

I would try one roll first, but add what you just said to the special instructions and send it to Kodac (probably, if they still do this type of thing) and not Walmart for development.

as long as they were never in direct sunlight or in hot weather, they should be ok.
just to be sure, have one developed and see.

it's best always to keep unopened film boxes in the fridge, and when a film has been exposed and can't be developed right away, it should be put in it's little airtight plastic box when the air humidity index is about 30%, and not more, and freeze it until the day you have them developed.

film development has been standardized for ages, and all the development machines are completely automatic, so there's very little to worry about this. Telling the lab they're very old negs will not change a thing.
where there is lots of variations is in the printing of those negs. some labs do very good work and others stink.

my credentials in photography: photolab technician for about 20 years. now retired.

even if the films have been exposed to heat, like very hot weather, the negs should still give you photos that are worth printing; the colors might be a bit different and the contrast too, but overall it should not be bad.

if you have one roll developed and the prints don't look very bad, then you could have only the films developed, and not printed;
then you could use a good scanner to digitize the films and then process those negs in a good image program like photoshop to bring them up to a very good quality level. once this is done, you can see the photos on your monitor or print them.

That's good and interesting info, thanks J.B. I'll let y'all know how and if they come out.

Unless the evidence is too incriminating.

Be careful there Rick. Never know what you were taking pics of back in the 70's!

Kodak does not do this type of thing anymore and Wal Mart is fine if you send the film out in the envelopes. The envelopes go to Fuji for developing. Don't even try to ask the WalMart employee anything. You will get nothing more than a vacant stare.

Remember what JB said about the scanner.... don't fret too much if the prints are not great. The negatives still could be pretty darn good. Sometimes the automated machine is the culprit.

even if the negatives are not very good as you might see on a few prints, those defects should be easily corrected with an image program.
unless you're trained, it's very difficult to see if negatives have suffered from heat or are in good condition.
if you do this, get a scanner that has at least 4800 dpi resolution.
anything less and you will miss lots of fine details in the original negs.

Huh. I'd have thought Mark would want to be helpful here. Apparently not.

Cliff notes: they won't be perfect but there may be some images. Or maybe, there won't.

Hey Rick-
Sorry, I haven't been around much. But I agree with everyone else!

Thanks Mark, I'm rather stoked!

Rick, you may want to take the negatives to a photography shop. Not a CVS or something of the sort. Hopefully, a photography shop will understand the sensitivity of the negatives that you are trying to get developed and handle them with more care...

Good luck man.

color film development is always done in automated machines; it does not know "Handling with care". it also has no provisions for special requests of any kind.
someone takes the film out of the can, clips it to a running metal bar in the machine's "input" side, and it is automatically taken through all the steps necessary right up to drying. during all that time, no one and nothing ever touches the film, except the chemicals in the different baths. the employee who handles the undeveloped film usually wears white cotton gloves, just in case he would touch the emulsion side of the film.

if you have doubt about the film handling by an employee, then take it to a photography shop, as dakkon said; but even that is no guarantee; accidents can happen.

i've seen hundreds of thousands of film rolls processed and only 1 or maybe 2 films were ever ruined by the machine, not by an employee.

I took in a couple of rolls yesterday to CVS, one came out great while the other didn't develope at all. The guy said it appeared the roll that didn't develope was never shot but the negatives to me look like there may be some very faint images on them. The roll that did develope was from late '88 or very early '89 and as I stated, came out excellent. So far we're shooting 50% with only 50 more rolls to go.

that's very good news.
don't hesitate to ask me if you have any questions.

what's CVS ?

CVS is a drug store chain.

Rick, how did you end up with so many undeveloped rolls?

I really don't know Mark, it started while I was in the Army and was taking more pictures than there were facilities available in the remote area overseas I was stationed and it sort of snowballed from there.

Does that mean there's a snowball's chance in Florida that the film is going to be okay?