When you go to use the Benzo in your developer add the benzo just before use to the tanks worth of chems.
Mix the Benzo with the hot water and top off to one liter. Distilled water is preferred as this chemical is used in small quantities and tap water might get nasty after a long while. Take 900ml of distilled water and heat it to 125f (50C or so). You will be making a 1% solution so you will need an additional 1 liter bottle for storage aside from your normal Developer -Stop Bath - Fixer containers. You will want to order a small 10gram bottle from ArtCraft Chemicals in NY state or from Photographers Formulary. It's a chemical commonly used in water treatment plants and a little goes a long way. The secret ingredient to help us fight base fog is a chemical called Benzotrialzole. The author assumes that the reader already knows about daylight film loaders/ reloading 35mm cassettes and basic film developing.
This film was rated at 200 speed or so back in the day.I exposed it at 32 ISO for these tests. As of the penning of this instructable that makes this film 65 years old as previously stated. 400 ISO film made today might drop to 200 ISO after a decade of storage, 20 years it's now 100 ISO 30 years 50 ISO 40 years 25 ISO etc.įor this tutorial I'm using extremely old Dupont Superior 3 motion picture stock that expired in 1952. As a general rule expect to lose 1 stop of speed per decade of age give or take. High speed film tends to fare worse than low speed film. Base Fog is an overall cloudiness that occurs to film as it breaks down & ages, Heat, humidity, background radiation all take their toll on film stock as it ages. The trick with aged stock is to develop the film and not the "base fog". Your preferred B&W chemistry (for this tutorial I used some assorted developers so you can see which ones looks best)ġ0 grams of Benzotrialzole-available from Photographers Formulary or ArtCraft chemicals Your film-preferrably a 100ft can of bulk old stockĪ Watson/Patterson/ Lloyds daylight loaderĪ room that can be made totally dark (closet or window-less bathroom) or a film changing bag One old roll of 24 exposure is going to be a crap shoot. It's best to buy old film in some lot quantity as this gives you the ability to do snip tests and find the right combination of dev, time, additives. It's generally cooler in the Northeast and figure a basement is likely to be a constant 68F sometimes cooler. I took him on his word & bought all 10 rolls on a dealio. The seller disclosed that this was in a dry basement from an estate sale in Virginia and this was a sealed box with 10 100ft tins inside and he stated "no weird smells"-when film breaks down it puts out a stink-bug vinegar sorta smell. Look at the condition of the can in the auction pics, this is often an indicator of how it was stored. Do they know if it was cold-stored ? (frozen-best, refrigerated-better, cold basement-good, house closet ,so-so, Attic/Garage/Back yard shed, not good). When you are looking to buy aged stock from auction sites ask questions of the seller: 1. It's perfectly suitable for fun effects, period reproduction and camera function test. If a new 100ft roll of Tmax or Foma that cost between 50-80 bucks looked like the results from this 65 year expired film you bet I would want my money back-but this film was only $7 for 100ft or less than. Film technology changed, improved & evolved over the years. A word on shooting old stock-really old stuff will just never look like new film-it's going to be different. Dupont stopped making motion picture film around 1972. If this film were an american person it would be eligible for Social Security. But we want usable results from that film, right? What good is a 100ft can of scratch test leader?įor this instructable we are going to use some EXTREMELY old Dupont Superior 3 B&W film that was dated in 1952. Thrift store lenses & cameras and any film we can get on the cheap. Us film photographers are always scavanging for a deal.