Freezing film

Adow2

Adow2

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Alan
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Hi All,


What is the script with freezing film? Should you only freeze it if it's going out of date? What are the benefits of putting in the freezer? I've stock piled a fair amount of pound land stuff, and a number of boxes of iso 200 Kodak. Can I/should I put any in my freezer?

Thanks for any advice!

Cheers for taking the time to read this thread.

Alan
 
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Adow2 said:
for king
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No need to swear is there :lol:

I freeze a lot of my film as soon as I get it, and the stuff I know I'm more likely to use will be refrigerated. All put in freezer bags, and allowed to defrost/come up to room temperature before use.
 
I wouldn't panic about cold storing film.

In general its only professional emulsions that get cold stored until sale.
It certainly will not hurt the film if you put it in the fridge or even freeze it if you don't think you will be using it for years.

People worry to much about this

8087592494_0810c1bf41_b.jpg



^^^^ Five years out of date Velvia 50 not cold stored
 
freecom2 said:
No need to swear is there :lol:
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Sorry gonna edit my original post! :-) stupid predictive text and auto correct! Lol

freecom2 said:
I freeze a lot of my film as soon as I get it, and the stuff I know I'm more likely to use will be refrigerated. All put in freezer bags, and allowed to defrost/come up to room temperature before use.
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Can it just stay in the freezer for as long as you want? Or will it eventually deteriorate anyway? How long does it need to defrost, just an hour or two?

Cheers

Alan
 
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Just to add:- It's like a dead body as it preserves it :), but it would be interesting to know:- does freezing film last for ever or does it still deteriorate but very very slowly, as the emulsion is on some sorta of plastic (or is it cellophane).
 
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excalibur2 said:
but it would be interesting to know does freezing film last for ever or does it still deteriorate but very very slowly.
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It will degrade significantly more slowly than at room temperature but it will still degrade.
 
abbandon said:
I wouldn't panic about cold storing film.

In general its only professional emulsions that get cold stored until sale.
It certainly will not hurt the film if you put it in the fridge or even freeze it if you don't think you will be using it for years.

People worry to much about this

^^^^ Five years out of date Velvia 50 not cold stored
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Cracking photograph! But will the pound land AGFA remain that way five years or of date? I am making the assumption that professional film will keep better than the bog standard cheap stuff?
 
Adow2 said:
Cracking photograph! But will the pound land AGFA remain that way five years or of date? I am making the assumption that professional film will keep better than the bog standard cheap stuff?
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Don't know if things have changed but pro film was the worst as it should be used fresh.....I have colour pro film and consumer 120 film that's about 12-14 years old (stored at room temp), and the pro film is all over the place with the colours but the consumer film is still good.

Pro film about 13 years old, you adjust for one colour and it throws the others out..a scanning and Photoshop nightmare.
 
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Proffessional films are generally considered a lot more fussy from the storage point of view.

I very much doubt poundland are taking much care with how they store Agfa Vista, does it have any date information on it ?

Kodack Pdf about storage of photographic materails.

Plenty of people out there saying that ten year old frozzen film works fine for them and as ever high speed film are more likely to be problematic.
 
It does indeed continue to degrade, but at a slower pace. If you've got the space, why not? As Brian's results (and others) show, you can reliably extend the working lifetime of your film. What's not to like?
 
freecom2 said:
It does indeed continue to degrade, but at a slower pace. If you've got the space, why not? As Brian's results (and others) show, you can reliably extend the working lifetime of your film. What's not to like?
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Indeed but if you have a batch of old films it's best to check one out first. The ordinary consumer film (that was about 13 years old) which was Fujicolour scanned easily and it gave nice results:-

 
I have large amounts of OOD film, but, I have never frozen, because I feel that man made products of the like of plastics can lose there integrity and become brittle, therefore I only refrigerate and to date I have never had a problem. The caveat to this is my experience is with colour in the main and not B&W.

For me refrigerate not freeze.
 
Thanks for all the info everyone!

All my poundland Agfa have got expiry dates into 2015. So there's no rush on this apart from wether or not a need to put some in now or nearer the expiry date. According to the Kodak PDF you shouldn't rely on the freezing process keeping film from going off after the expiry anyway. Think I may put a few in anyway and keep some out its normally stored at the bottom of my wardrobe so should be at normal room temp anyway.

I just wondered about the benefits as it seem a fair amount of people mention freeze storing their film.
 
Don't take too much attention of what Kodak says - it is partly to cover themselves (that's the whole point of the expiry date), and it's in their interest for people to buy fresh.
 
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