Film can “reveal” some very nice surprises to us, witness these images from a virgin Kodak Plus x pan 125 ASA film that has expired since October 1974, which I decided to finally use this morning.
This film, 620 small axis made at that time in France, I had to first of course in absolute darkness, rewind it on a 120 large axis reel in order to be able to use it and load it into my Rolleiflex camera format 6×6.
After a few shots taken this very morning outdoors, I developed it in a normal chemistry developer of D 76 from Kodak, the minimum condition for carrying out this test in optimal conditions.
Well here are the results which I admit, surprised me and which I am sending you because I sincerely find them impressive.
Imagine, a virgin film aged 50 years almost to the day and which offers me today, September 29, 2024, such images!
I still have a few left inherited in 1983, in memory of when my father was a portrait photographer in Roanne. A great story of longevity.
Did you say film??? Honestly, let’s call it magic, you can’t believe it.
So now this simple question arises for me: will the digital image be as effective later in time? Answer in…..
So I’m going to continue this adventure, next time by developing one of the films I have left, but this time you can guess, in one of my alternative ecological developers.
Jacques Revon
Honorary journalist, author, photographer.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Revon
