Like many film photographers we have a tendency to collect not only cameras, lenses, and accessories but also film. And recently I was looking at the massive collection of film sitting in my storage area and thinking that I should shoot this all now before it all gets so expired it is no longer useful to anyone. In this post I’ll be sharing my selection of black & white films that I had laying around in my collection although one C-41 roll did get included but because I decided to develop it in a traditional B&W developer it got stuck into this post.
The first film out of the pile was my final roll of Eastman XT Panchromatic Type 5220, or simply Eastman XT. This roll was part of three sent to me by fellow film photographer and all around awesome dude Anthony, it’s the motion picture version of a favourite film of mine, Kodak Panatomic-X. Now I had shot a couple of roll earlier and developed them in Adox XT-3 and Ilfotec HC with excellent results. But Anthony suggested I try a roll in D96, or Kodak’s dedicated motion picture developer. And they certainly did not disappoint. It goes to show that there’s nothing wrong with development times under five minutes.
The next roll was Rollei Pan 25, now this is obviously a rerolled film from another film stock, but after a bit of searching online and looking at dates, there is a strong chance that the film is Ekfe 25! And based on the colour of the film base, it certainly would be Efke. Now my records indicated I shot this film multiple times but mostly with lab development, and only once did I develop it at home using Blazinal. But I could not find any examples online. Also I found that a lot of my results seemed over cooked, through exposure or development I don’t know. I hazard a guess that I used the wrong development times because my searches online indicated that at some point the film stock changed from ORWO NP17 to Efke 25. So armed with the knowledge that I was working with Efke I went with 510-Pyro, exposing the roll at ASA-16. And when I pulled the rolls out from the tank I had negatives that looked good and they scanned wonderfully with sharp near grainless images which only confirmed that the film stock was indeed old school Efke 25!
And then I started finding the weird stuff, I had a couple of rolls from the FPP including their Yeti a orthochromatic copy film rated at ASA-6. Thankfully the FPP has the listed times for D96. Yeti is intended for use as a direct contact copying titles and mats in motion picture work, while I originally thought that the film stock was something out of Eastern Europe, the rebate indicated Eastman 2302, a low speed high resolution print film. It can be processed as both a positive and a negative film. And I rather liked the results I got, although it probably could have used with a bit less development, maybe 15 seconds less.
And no surprise, here’s another one from the FPP, this one is Eastman High-Con 2369. Now I’ve worked with High-Contrast Eastman films in the past, but 2369 is one that I have not. According to the FPP website the primary use of 2369 in the motion picture industry was for making silhouette mattes and special FX traveling mattes at motion picture labs. The film is listed as being ASA-25, but I decided to shoot it at ASA-20 and develop normally in Ilfotec HC. I rather like these results, they’re gritty and they certainly make for interesting rendering of scenes I enjoy capturing around campus.
The last roll that I went through was another straggler of re-rolled cine-film, in this case Eastman 2366, the one with the yellow base. Now I have worked with this one in the past, and I think I got it in a trade for a Minolta XG-M from Alex Smith. I went back to my review of the film and landed on shooting the film at ASA-6 and developing in Ilfotec HC. THe original purpose of 2366 was to make master B&W positive films from its negative counterpart, 2234. But you have to use a specific positive developer which is only available from one source that I refuse to patron. But in traditional negative developers, it produces a high-contrast negative image.
And the last roll from the bunch is another that I have shot in the past, Kodak Kodalith. But this time I developed it in MQ-19, a modern copy of Kodak’s fast-acting high-contrast developer D-19. Again I’m unsure where I got this roll from but it has been sitting around in my collection for some time. Kodalith film was made by Kodak and was primarily designed for making line and halftone negatives for photomechanical reproduction. I went into this not expecting any results, and sure enough there was a lot of fog, but I could see some latent images. The intial scan preview did not give me much confidence but when I started to mask out my selections I could with some work start seeing some good results. They were exactly what I had expected, a monochrome, graphic quality to them. Sure there’s a lot of problems because of the age and the fog, but ultimately I was rather pleased.
Okay so technically this isn’t a true black & white film, but it is one of two chromogentic B&W films I had laying around. So with one I shot it for developing in a C-41 kit (you’ll see those later) and then one to develop in a traditional B&W developer. I also went and used this for September’s Ultra-Wide challenge from the Embrace the Grain Podcast. For the developer I went with Ilford Ilfotec HC with a 1+31 dilution and shot the film at ASA-320. While the negatives ended up fogged, but I saw some images and they scanned nicely. I was pretty impressed at how these ended up looking after scanning and some editing.
While I had planned to share a second part on this series with my collection of colour films, that will have to wait for a bit because when I went to mix up the chemistry it didn’t look right, there was a lot of sediment and clumping so I didn’t want to waste time and effort to destroy the films in question. So the second part will have to wait until next year as I slowly get the films developed in their normal processes, including ECN-2, C-41 and E-6.
Thank you for addressing this issue. I have a vast collection of films sitting in a dedicated fridge. It can be a challenge figuring out and compensating for the ISO and speed on a camera. Yesterday I used twenty-year-old Ilford 50 on my Yashica 35 Electro. It was a partly cloudy day, and the film was hit and miss. I live in the Southwest desert, so the amount of sun works nicely with the low ISO film. I will likely scan the photos and do any required balancing for better results.
The most frustrating part is developing your film and there is nothing to see. As a rule of thumb, I always use a backup when using older film to mitigate the risk. There are exceptions. I have purchased rolls of Kodak BW film (100 feet) and will try to match it to a camera based upon results. It is not perfect, but offers fewer surprises and disappoints.
Over the summer I purchased a 1950’s Semi-Leotax folding camera. It had film in it dating back over 60 years. The roll was half shot. I decide to take a chance and use the rest of the film. I developed it in D-76 and it came out with a tad bit too much noise, but otherwise not complaints.
All in all, you never know until you try.