{"id":18583,"date":"2017-05-27T05:26:06","date_gmt":"2017-05-27T09:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/?p=18583"},"modified":"2017-05-25T08:37:55","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T12:37:55","slug":"processing-old-film-union-pacific-in-the-blue-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/processing-old-film-union-pacific-in-the-blue-mountains\/","title":{"rendered":"Processing Old Film; Union Pacific in the Blue Mountains."},"content":{"rendered":"

So what do you do when you find an old roll of black & white film? A roll that has sat, exposed but unprocessed, for years, for decades.<\/p>\n

You could throw it away. But that would be a dumb thing to do. There is another option.<\/p>\n

Back in July 1991, my old pal TSH (a regular Tracking the Light reader) and I made an epic two and half week trip across the American West.<\/p>\n

On that trip I exposed dozens of rolls of Kodachrome 25 slide film using my Nikon F3T. But I also brought my Leica M2, and exposed a few rolls of black & white film.<\/p>\n

While I processed some of the black & white shortly after the trip, for reasons I can\u2019t justify, two rolls of Ilford FP4 remained unprocessed.<\/p>\n

These have followed me through the years. I had them so long that I\u2019d forgotten when I\u2019d exposed them. They were mixed in a bag with other unexposed film.<\/p>\n

\"\"
July 23, 1991, a Union Pacific unit train ascends the Blue Mountain grade toward Kamela, Oregon, passing a location known Bodie. I processed this film in May 2017 using my customized process. The results would have been better if I hadn\u2019t waited more than a quarter century, but they aren\u2019t bad considering. One of the defects of the long process time is an increase in grain size.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Union Pacific SD60M at Bodie, Oregon Jul 23, 1991. Leica M2 with 50mm Summicron.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
At the back of the unit\u00a0train were a pair of SD40-2s working as helpers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Some great sound from these locomotives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Several years ago, I worked out a special process for getting good results from old black & white film. I\u2019ve processed rolls up to 40 years after exposure and found presentable images on them.<\/p>\n

Although the latent image remains in the film\u2019s silver halide crystals for decades, simply processing the film in the ordinary fashion won\u2019t yield desirable results.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve found it necessary to work with multiple stage development, which requires unusually long process times. Key to making this work is a carefully measured antifogging solution. I will detail this process in future posts.<\/p>\n

Tracking the Light Posts Daily<\/span><\/h3>\n

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So what do you do when you find an old roll of black & white film? A roll that has sat, exposed but unprocessed, for years, for decades. You could throw it away. But that would be a dumb thing to do. There is another option. Back in July 1991, my old pal TSH (a … Continue reading Processing Old Film; Union Pacific in the Blue Mountains.<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[48],"tags":[4206,4207,3814,4205,46,282],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/\u00a9Brian_Solomon_53601843.jpg?fit=1790%2C1117","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2BVuC-4PJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18583"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18584,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18583\/revisions\/18584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/briansolomon.com\/trackingthelight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}