johnfromnorwich
even my wife noticed the dif..
I found a load of expired rolls of Tri-X and HP5 in my freezer last week. The arrival of children has meant that I haven't used a film camera for at least 5 years (possibly 8 years!) and the film was dated as use before 2013. The chemicals sitting in my cellar were of a similar vintage. But I took a punt anyway and fired off a roll with the Rolleiflex, and souped it in Rodinal (which never expires). The catch is that the fixer had significantly oxidised - there were crystals of what I'm guessing were ammonium sulfate floating in the stock bottle and had to flip a coin over filtering it or using 5-8 year old 1+4. I did the latter. Couldn't find any Ilfotol, but this was just a test, so nothing to lose. Well it all worked. But, there does seem to be some base fogging on the negatives. I can live with it and I'm going to move to caffeine developer anyway so some gunge is fine, but I'm wondering if this is a) the film, b) the weaker fixer (I left it for longer than usual to compensate a bit) or a mixture of both. What do you reckon? I definitely need new chemicals anyway. I'd like to pin it down before shooting anything I care about but similarly I don't want to waste a load of film on tests.