This is a fairly special roll, as I found an extremely good deal on some expired film! This roll of Fujifilm Neopan SSS expired in 1974, and was probably manufactured in 1970 or so, making the emulsion the oldest piece of equipment I have used (so far). Frankly, I was concerned that nothing would turn out — why would it? I had 50 year old film, no trustworthy ISO, no development times, and no idea how it was stored!

The film was originally rated for ISO 200. The marketing on the box called this “extremely fast film”, humorous considering we now have several film stocks at ISO 3200. Film typically degrades as it ages (hence the expiration date) and a decent rule of thumb is to decrease the sensitivity by one stop for every decade the film has expired. 5 decades would take 5 stops (5 halvings), so ISO 200 to ISO 6. That’s… unworkable for me. Thankfully, black and white negative films tend to age better than color films (and much better than slide films) so I tried my hand at ISO 25. This might have effectively been pushing the film a little, but I assumed the grain would already be pretty intense, so that’s moot.

To deal with the lack of development times (since my developers were made after this film was discontinued), I tried a new method for me: stand development. My developer of choice at the moment is Ilford’s Ilfotec LC29. A typical development process would have us dilute the developer carefully to a ratio of, say, 1:9, 1:19 or 1:29 and developing for a number of minutes (between 5 and 20, depending on the film ISO) with agitations every minute. Stand development instead has us very carefully dilute the developer to something like 1:120 and develop for an hour with one agitation halfway through. The results are usually flatter negatives, but with the upshot that we don’t need to worry about the film ISO. Since we don’t know the effective ISO or any real development times for this roll, stand development seems like a reasonable gamble. One risk of stand development is an effect known as bromide drag, in which streaks appear on the negative from developer interacting with the sprocket holes of 35mm film. Agitation usually prevents this, but over agitating in stand development can lead to over development of the highlights.

Camera: Ricoh KR-10 Super

Lenses:

Film: Fujifilm Neopan SSS

Post Processing: GIMP

First shot. Zero contrast in these clouds, and the grain is pretty crazy for an ISO 200 film. However, and I cannot overstate this point, we have an image!!
With a little more light, we get a little more contrast. Frankly, I’m not upset with this shot! It’s grainy, but that’s a nice look.
Photographing the Ricoh store with a Ricoh camera. I don’t think this place services cameras, unfortunately. Especially not ones from the 1980’s.
The shadow here was much more defined in person, so clearly something between the expired film and development technique has caused a little haziness, but the detail elsewhere is good.
Even in macro, the film is quite impressive! There’s details in the leaves, and the flowers are just about resolvable behind the grain.
This image is a little flat, even with a little help in post. Further, you can see the bromide drag quite clearly on the uniform sky. Those alternating bands of light-and-dark are the drag in effect.
The shadow beneath the bust’s neck lacks detail, and the contrast on his face leaves a little to be desired. Clearly this isn’t the most dynamic of films, but cut it some slack.
The clouds were much more contrasting in this composition, so we’re seeing the flattening effects of stand development I think.
Oh, another thing. The film would not sit flat. Even when clamped down for scanning, it bulged in the middle of each frame. I think it’s most noticeable in this shot, but it’s not helped by the cenotaph being a little curved, too.
More bromide drag here.
I messed up the focal plane a little here, thanks to the Ricoh being just a hair out. However, the K2 is having some electronic problems which makes it unusable :(
The grain is really quite noticeable, almost like a Delta 3200 roll rather than an ISO 25.
Cat! What a fellow.
Bye, now.
She is STRUGGLING up these steps. Had to stop for a rest. It wasn’t even that far…
Lovely bromide drag again, but still a nice landscape.
Little to no detail on the flowers in this macro, but half of that is from the focal plane…
Nice detail on what is in focus. Oh well!

Overall very impressed with what came out of this roll. For something that expired two and a half generations ago, and considering all the unknowns in both shooting and developing, I’m really surprised we got results at all!