No color from old Kodak C-41 film? (samples inside)

[Scheimpflug]

I have just had a roll of old C-41 Kodak Max 400 processed at a local lab, a roll out of a set of three that I picked up at a thrift store while traveling. The rolls were still in their black plastic containers, but not in the boxes, so unfortunately I have no idea how old the film is or how it was stored.

I wasn't expecting perfect results, but I was a bit surprised to examine the negatives, as I found that they had essentially no separation in the colors.


Does anyone have any thoughts on what might have gone wrong? Is this just what film does when it ages or is stored improperly?


Here are the scans of the negatives, along with my best attempt at a color correction (including the orange mask removal):







Please forgive the composition - the camera is handmade, and doesn't yet have a viewfinder. I can see that I still need to dial in the focusing and catch a few light leaks as well.

[Jesito]

These are poor results even for an expired film. I've run many expired rolls and never got such a result. Are you sure the camera is working properly?. If so, maybe the roll was damaged beyond useage...

Regards.
Jes.

[Excalibur]

erm well colour neg and B/W film are quite tough but haven't used film left out in the desert for a few years but at a guess (other than blaming the lab for shoddy work), could it be underexposed negs then cross processed i.e. E6 film in c41 chemicals or c41 film in E6 chemicals...............

[Scheimpflug]

[marty]

Looks either they kept the film in the shop window exposed to elements for ages or ran it through expired chemistry (possibly even both of them). I feel to exclude x-pro, in such case the mask should be on the turquoise side rather than the usual orange.

Cheers, M.

[Scheimpflug]

So I made a parallel thread over at the APUG forums, and a member there clued me in on the problem. The incandescent light source I was using behind the slide duplicator didn't have enough blue light to overcome the orange mask in the film.
http://www.apug.org/forums/forum40/85814-no-color-old-kodak-c-41-film-samples-inside.html


I don't have any bright blue lights, so instead I picked a light blue color and displayed it full-screen on my monitor, and used that as the backlight for the slide duplicator. It wasn't nearly as bright as using an incandescent light behind it, so my exposure times were really long (4+ seconds)... Here is the blue color that I used:




... and here are the results!








As you can see, they are substantially improved!

I do need to find a better blue light source though... Does anyone have any ideas?

[marty]

What about a flash with a blue gel ? That would be triggered with a sync cable, just behind the film holder, direct or reflected from a white surface.

Cheers, M.

[Neil Purling]

Scheimpflug: How far past date was the film? How badly was it stored?

Does anyone know where the blue-sensitive colour layer is in the emulsion? I wondered if that is why the film has not responded to blue light correctly.

I am particularly interested because I have a few boxes of this very film. I now think that as they are all past date they might be suspect.

[Scheimpflug]

Unfortunately, I have no idea how old the film was or how it was stored. The film came along with an Olympus Superzoom 80G which I had purchased from a thrift store, together in a little plastic bag.
http://forum.mflenses.com/olympus-superzoom-80g-t34903.html

The Olympus was in *mint* condition with zero signs of wear or even any dust in the gaps in the plastic body, so I suppose I could assume that the film was purchased around the same time as the camera and they were simply never used. If so, that would place the date somewhere in the early 2000s? The only date reference I have is the downloadable owners manual from Olympus, which has a 2002 date on it...


At this point, I'm pretty sure that the color issues were almost entirely a result of my capture setup with the slide duplicator, particularly the color balance of the backlight. I would experiment with it more, but I think I'm just going to buy a "real" scanner instead.


How out of date is your film?

[philslizzy]

they may have been made for the the old C22 process