out of date film - did i get a bargain?

[grantsmith]

a hoi-hoi. I happened to be going past a camera shop which was having a clearout. After rumaging around i came away with 12 rolls of out of date super 8 film for £2. There are 5 rolls of kodachrome 40, 1 of 160 and 6 rolls of agfa moviechrome 40. The dates range from 1977 to 1993. I know I still have a little time (I think around a couple of months) to shoot the kodachrome 40 and still get it developed for free. I have a few questions.

 

1) Will anything appear on the film - the film was apparently kept fairly well in a celler (not refrigerated)?. I've used 3 years out of date 16mm film before (I was told to compensate by over exposing by 1/3 of a stop after a clip test). Is 30 years pushing things a little? Obviously a clip test would be a little difficult for this. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to use this best or should I just stick the camera auto exposure on and hope for the best?

 

 

2) THe Agfachrome. This comes with free processing like the k40. I'm assuming this offer has now expired? Can I just send it off to somewhere like the widescreen centre and pay for regular processing?

 

3) The K160. Should I do as above?

 

4) I still have a couple of rolls of quartzchrome (the russian stuff). Can I get this this processed at the widescren centre too.

 

Or should count my losses (of £2) and I just get rid of it all?

 

Thanking you in advance.

 

PS I'm in the UK

[A.Oliver]

Hi, avoid the agfa moviechrome 40 stock like the plague, if you manage to get an image, it wont be long before image fungus ruins your film. Have view a lot of 1980s agfa, perutz and dixons super 8 images from various sources, including my own 1982/3 agfa 40 and 160 images, all are unwatchable due to emulsion fugus. Do yourself a favour and bin the agfa stock.

[daniel mahlknecht]

I usually develop this old superexpired films in my LOMO tank, using ordinary b&W neg or even paper processing chemicals. What you get is an sometimes more or less good b&W negative (from every film, also colorreversals or color negs), then I telecine it and make it to a positive on the computer. IOviously I do this only for fun as you never know what you will get, but its fun fto me and sometimes results are surprisingly god. as there do not exist official developingtimes for the films in combination whit these non apropriate chemicals i yust take the longest time for an other photoneg and then develope it a little longer.

I only once developed a film where it did not work (a very old b&w double8 film) I could see the pictures, but the film did not become transparent, so there is no way to telecine it.

 

remember YUST FOR FUN

 

daniel

[Mark Dunn]

Agfa stopped making cine film over a decade ago. Some of mine from the early 80s has got the fungus; still quite watchable and of course it has historical interest to me which outweighs the faults. I'm wondering if the unexposed film might have it already; if the gelatin is that tasty it doesn't need developing. The Ektachrome 160 Rocky Mountain can process at a price- I had some done 5 years ago for about $20- and Frank Bruinsma in Holland does it as well, I think.

Shoot the K40 now- after all it's paid for- but expect some odd results. Or dev to b/w neg as suggested.

[grantsmith]

Thanks guys. This is appreciated. I'm not expecting too much in the quality department just having fun experimenting.