A new photography project: Best if used before you were born

Your packaged food comes with an expiration date.  So do your batteries, your medicines and your camera film.  Depending on a film’s storage, you have a chance of getting acceptable photographs for up to a few years past the date printed on the film’s box or wrapper.  That’s why most photographers put their film in a refrigerator or in a freezer; cold temperatures actually extend the film’s shelf life.  Although expired color film, with its myriad combination of developing formats, may produce unnatural consequences for shooting and producing final prints, black and white film may survive and be useful for years after its expiration date.

You can get a few years, yes.  But what about surviving for a few decades?

That’s right, Chuck said decades.

You know it’s time for another experiment.  You just know it.

On the right is a roll of Super-XX 120 high speed panchromatic film. ASA is 100. Expiration date on this bad boy – May 1959. That’s right – this stuff is older than the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim baseball team.

The box contains notes that this roll of Super-XX was spooled for Supreme Photo Supply Co. of New York City, and was, according to he package, “spooled from large rolls of Govt. excess stock.” Great. I’ve got a roll of government surplus film.

Granted, there are some films out there for which proper developing is impossible – Kodachrome, for one.  But before I actually USE this films in my camera, I have to speak to someone who knows more about vintage films than me.

That person is Charles Lang, an expert at Kodak’s main headquarters in Rochester.

I described to Mr. Lang the films that were part of the project.

“Well, you’ll definitely need to use a developer like HC110, Dilution B, which is handy for developing old film, that developer is a low fogging product.”

“Thanks, Mr. Lang.  Now if I want to use this film to photograph something – ”

“Wait – you what to do what?  The film hasn’t been exposed?  And you want to take pictures with it?”

“Yep.  I want to use this film – which is unexposed and is nearly half a century past its expiration date – and put it in my cameras and shoot with it.”

After we both had a moment of amazement, Mr. Lang gave me some advice.  “Any film material will be exposed to ambient radiation over the course of many years, so the fog on them will be high.   The paper backing on roll film is not designed to be light tight for 50 years, so you’re going to see greater fogging on the edges of the finished picture.  But if you’re going to use this film, shoot it at half speed.  I’d like to see the results when they’re done.”

I thanked him for the advice, and promised to keep in touch regarding my progress with the film.

And now, the experiment parameters:

The 120 roll was shot with my Rolleiflex Automat MX TLR camera. On April 2, during a road trip to photograph a PBL playoff game in Rochester, I took the old-film-packed Rolleiflex with me.

Before each shot, I composed and photographed the same scene by using a roll of 50 ISO efke black and white film in my Nikon F100 camera.  No filters or post-processing, other than the scanning of the film itself, was attempted.  What you see is what I exposed.  This was actually suggested to me by Kim, the owner of Stuyvesant Photo – that I show what the photographed subject would look like with contemporary film, and then shoot the same scene with the vintage film.

Now it’s off to the developer.  Two days after the film was exposed, the roll of vintage 120 film was dropped off at McGreevy Pro Lab in downtown Albany.  Bright and early Monday morning.  Joey at McGreevy took the film in.  It isn’t a Monday morning unless Chuck Miller is dropping SOMETHING off at McGreevy.

And here are the best pictures from the “best if used before 1959” Super-XX Kodak government surplus black and white film.  I had twelve exposures, these were the ones that stood out.  The pictures on the left were shot with 35mm 50 ISO black and white efke film in my Nikon F100; the photos on the right were shot with the 50+ year old Super-XX 120 film in my Rollei.

This is the Hamilton College Chapel in Clinton, N.Y. It stands in the center of campus and is the symbol of the college.
This is a better shot of the Chapel, straight on and forward. The sun is at my back.
Walk up College Hill Road and if you get winded, you can rest at this halfway station along the Hill.
This used to be a railroad station in Rochester, N.Y.; the L.V.R.R. stands for the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Today this building is the home of a Dinosaur Bar-B-Que restaurant. And yes, the food there is quite tasty.

I think this works.  If I’m being technical, this does fall under the category of “black and white, non-traditional” photography.  You can see the dark edges on each of the Super-XX photos; that’s the fogging caused by the film being unused for more than 50 years.

So what do you think of this little experiment?