How long does exposed film stay good?

I shot Mt. Hood on some TMAX 100 in august (at 5-7am to catch the sunrise off of Lake Trillium), I sent it to the lab yesterday.

It's been in the canisters, in my car for the last 4 months and I'm 99% sure it's fine, but I just need some filling in for that last 1%. The only thing i'm worried about is precipitation, I'm pretty sure it was wet and I know it was chilly and those canisters just lock in (or lock out) everything.

 

well...the temperature change couldn't have been great for it (being in a car and all)...but something will come out...lol

 

yeah, i'm not to worried about it, I can always go back. It's only 45minutes away.

 

I'm sure it'll be fine, Switch. It doesn't get that hot in PDX.

Now, for that old roll of Verichrome that's been in my grandpa's Brownie Hawkeye since 1955...that's another story!

 

i had various types of exposed slide film with me while travelling for months, also in very hot climate. none of them had any problem afterwards.

but temperatures in cars can get quite extreme ... not sure there.

wait and see

 

mkay, thanks for the info!

 

I had some film developed that I had shot over 13 years ago. and it came out fine.
It had been stored both in the house, and in a storage building that was not temperature regulated for about 6 months in Texas.

 

nice, that's good to know! :thumbsup:

 

Latent image keeping properties vary quite a bit from film to film. In general any problems show up in the shadow detail - because weak latent image centres (ie those composed of very few silver atoms) are the least stable (it's a little bit like reciprocity failure). Very fast films, and those with special sensitisation, seem to be more affected than slow and medium speed films.

My observations have been that Tri-X and Kodachrome will stand a lot of abuse before there is measurable loss of latent image and that Agfa APX 400, Kodak HIE and most very high speed films are the worst - like T-Max P3200, Delta 3200, Ektachrome P1600 etc. (I can only report on films that I have extensive experience of in hot conditions, mainly in SE Asia.)

APX 400 was the odd one out - most 400-speed films seemed to be OK. Even a three-month delay in the tropics lead to very noticeable loss of image detail and a change of image quality with APX 400.

T-Max P3200 and Delta 3200 really need to be developed as soon as possible after shooting for the best shadow detail, though the loss resulting from a delay will not be all that obvious.

Best,
Helen

 

oh, just remember one disaster ... had some AGFA consumer grade slide film which I carried around in Japan in the humid season ... and after developing tiny parts of the emulsion just fell off!!!

 

In the tropics Alex I have had heavy leather boots fall apart film emulsion isn't a shock at all.

 

Perhaps I'm nit-picking here, but don't you mean noticeable, and not measurable? And by noticeable I mean by eye. As far as measurable differences, latent image loss tends to be linear, as opposed to curvilinear. As such, a sensitive-enough densitometer would be able to measure loss before it was apparent to the naked eye. I believe that the slope of the line for density vs time simply differs between films, and not necessarily the curvature. That is, under constant environmental conditions, those films which begin to lose their latent images more quickly will continue to lose them at a similar rate. Perhaps this is something that could be better clarified by the APUG crowd.