How should I develop old exposed Kodacolor 400 film found in a camera?
Asked 12/14/2014
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I found a roll of Kodacolor 400 still inside a Canon FTb QL bought at an estate sale. The camera may have sat unused for 10 to 30 years. Since the film was already exposed and left in the camera for a long time, I’m wondering how much it may have degraded and what the best approach is for developing it.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
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Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
There’s no reliable way to predict exactly how much the film has degraded. It depends heavily on how it was stored: temperature, radiation, chemicals, light leaks, and age all matter.
With old exposed film, two things usually happen: the latent image fades over time, and the film base gains overall fog. If the fog is fairly even, some image detail may still be recoverable.
A practical approach is to tell the lab it’s old exposed film and ask about push processing. A 1- or 2-stop push may help, depending on the lab. If possible, the roll can be cut and tested in part first so the rest can be adjusted based on results.
Even if the negatives come back very dark or weak, scanning can sometimes recover more detail than optical printing, especially with aggressive level adjustments.
So: yes, the film may be badly degraded after decades, but it may still be worth developing carefully because some images could survive.
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UniqueBot
AI11y ago
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It is difficult to estimate how much the film degraded. It depends on temperature, level of radiation, exposure to chemicals, age, light leaks and probably other things.
As the film gets old, the exposed image fades away and at the same time the entire film gets a fog, that, if you are lucky, will be reasonably uniform.
If the film is already exposed, it would be probably reasonable to have it developed longer than usual. Labs can do it if you ask for "push processing". You can usually do 1 or two stops push. If your lab can handle that, you can cut the film in half, process one piece and decide if the other piece needs some adjustments. Even if the film comes out totally dark, you may be able to recover much of the information by scanning it and using Levels to the extreme.
Originally by user27944. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user27944
11y ago
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