Kodak Kodachrome

At first, I was shocked I got anything from any of the rolls. But I was even more shocked at the level of detail still captured in a roll that had been expired for 28 years. I was also surprised that the exposures came out pretty much spot on. I shot at ISO 16, which was 2 stops under the recommended box speed. The rule of thumb is to overexpose by a stop for every decade the film has expired. With it being 28 years at the time, I was going to shoot 3 stops under, but already being at ISO16, I struggled to meter the scene correctly as the Canon only went down to ISO25, and I was losing adequate daylight to properly expose the images I wanted to capture. However, overall I think they came out excellent, great detail in the shadows, images still sharp and clear, great tones throughout. The only major thing I noticed was the appearance of grain, considering that originally it was rated at ISO64. However, as film degrades, in time the grain increases, and I think that is especially noticeable in the above images. 

When I developed my first roll, I did get the film base to correctly develop; however, the development wasn't long enough for the images on the negative to fully develop. 

Home Development Attempt Technical Information :

I followed the standard steps when developing any Black and White negative film.

Step 1 - Prewash at 20 degrees Celsius for 5 Minutes (Water came out yellowish during this stage)

Step 2 - Developer (Ilfosol 1:9) at 20 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes (Agitation for 60 seconds, then every 60 seconds after for 15 seconds)

Step 3 -  Rinse  (To stop development and to wash the film) 

Step 4 - Fixer  (Ilford Fixer  1:4) at 20 degrees Celsius for 5 minutes

Step 5 - Final wash 

** While during the first development attempt, the negative developed, but with no images, I adjusted the second development time to 25 minutes at 23 degrees Celsius, which created faint images more than the first attempt, but still not detailed enough to scan.**

If I were going to do the development at home again, next time I would attempt to use a more aggressive developer like Ilford DD-X or Kodak D76 for a similar time frame.  

Lab Development (3rd roll) : 

Back in 2023, I paid £34.44 in total to have the 3rd roll developed by AG Photographic here in the UK, which is expensive in comparison with E-6, ECN-2 or C41; however, while looking again while writing this blog, it appears they have now stopped this in their lab. Despite the risk associated with trying not only an expired roll, but also the risk associated with an expired roll, with a process that doesn't exist anymore, cross-processed to black and white, made the reward of getting the images back even more rewarding. They defiantly aren't strong enough for project or portfolio work, but by doing this, it allowed me to grow as a photographer, pushing my technical abilities to the limits, but also by learning through trial and error, which I think is often overlooked in the film photography community, and I just had fun doing it.