any ideas on restoring expired film?

magicbastarder

took a roll of delta 400, expiry date 2003, recently, and the film is mottled (a film expiring 2004 was fine). below is one of the affected images - anyone any brilliant ideas for an easy way to clean it up? this is one of the more badly affected images.

Fajitas!

Something similar is going on with some Type 55 Polaroid stock of mine, but on a much worse scale.

Is that a scan from the neg or the print?

melekalikimaka

time machine

deaddonkey

are you 100% sure it isn't drying marks on the negative? certainly doesn't look like it, but stranger things have happened.

or is that a scan from a print?

magicbastarder

scan from the neg. i've had it happen before on two other expired films, they were expired when i got them, and i don't know how they were stored. the other film, processed at the same time in gunns, is fine.

Fajitas!

Yep, it's pretty similar to what's been happening on the neg side of my 55's.

If you've more to send through, you may want to see if you can get a developer with a bit more contrast. Try playing with Curve adjustment layers in PS, and see how much of it you can get to fade in.

Otherwise, you could always put some MAD vignetting, and call it Lomo. :pac:

magicbastarder

john gunn once gave me film which expired in january 1973 and it was fine; lost about three stops of sensitivity, though.

Fajitas!

It was most likely stored in a fridge all it's life, I'd say the film you have could have went from fridge to shelf before coming to your hands.

Was that the film with the blue tag on it? Some awfully low ISO like 12 or 25? I've seen some nice stuff with that.

magicbastarder

it was orwo 80 he gave me. i still have two rolls.

magicbastarder

anyway, i was hoping that there was some fancy schmancy filter or app which can remove the marks.

DaireQuinlan

I'm with deaddonkey, it looks like drying marks on the film, particularly the long streak right down the middle. Just as a quick experiment, try washing them again with a bit of wetting agent and squeegee them down thoroughly before leaving them to dry. Ordinarily I wouldn't do this (squeegee) but it might be worth your while to try it. Just wet your (clean !) fingers well in some of the wash water and use them to run down the length of the strip (given that I assume you've cut them into strips at this stage).

Another possibility I've encountered before is that if the negative is very thin sometimes you have to bring it up so much with levels that you start exaggerating the crappiness of the scanner. Did you scan this on a flatbed ?

magicbastarder

scan from a canon 8400f, which is certainly not the greatest scanner in the world, but it's pretty much unadjusted from the original scan.