shooting with old stock

[Matias Nicolas]

Hi! Im shooting  documentary in digital, and some scenes in 35mm. For this case, we are buying new stock, and also the producer has 15  cans of 35 mm 122 mts virgin material in his fridge. He has this material in the fridge for 15 years ago. I should make a sensitometric test to each can no? 

[Tyler Purcell]

2 hours ago, Matias Nicolas said:

Hi! Im shooting  documentary in digital, and some scenes in 35mm. For this case, we are buying new stock, and also the producer has 15  cans of 35 mm 122 mts virgin material in his fridge. He has this material in the fridge for 15 years ago. I should make a sensitometric test to each can no? 

If the film all came from the same source and is the same stock, one roll test should be fine. 

15 years is a lot, but if it was stored below 50 degrees for all the time, it maybe ok. We've tried freezing film long term and it does survive better, but not much. The difference is negligible, but deep freezers are cheaper and that's what most of us use for long term storage. Heck, I keep all my new film in the deep freeze anyway. 

My guess is, it'll have a lot of fog and fail the test, but that doesn't mean it's unusable, especially if it's a lower ISO like 50 or 100. If it's 500T or something, it'll be horribly grainy even if shot at a lower ISO. 

 

 

[Dirk DeJonghe]

There is one aging effect that you cannot stop by freezing and that is cosmic ray fogging; it is a bit like X-rays but much lower dose over a very long time. It affects high speed stock a lot more than say 50D, but even then 15 years is a lot. I recommend shooting a minute of so in various conditions, overexposing already one stop to start and ask your filmlab their opinion.

 

[Aapo Lettinen]

If the cans have always been in the same order and formation in the fridge, the outer ones may sometimes have pulsing base fog for other side of the roll stored in different temperature than the other. So you may want to mark where each roll was placed in the fridge and then test at least one of the outermost roll from each side. If they have pulsing grain, move to the inner ones and test them too as they may still be ok.

You will get lots of base fog with that old of film anyway but likely it is fully usable as long as the fog level stays stable and is not pulsing.

And yes, you are supposed to rotate and move the rolls in long term storage every now and then to reduce chances of temperature gradients aging them at different rates. Especially so if the fridge is packed full and the air does not circulate correctly. It is just too easy to forget the rolls in the same pile for 15 years and then starting to guess if the outer side was 5 degrees warmer the whole time