What stays and what goes?

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CJV8

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I'm slowly building up to the point at which I'll get my first sheets developed so I've been going through all the processing stuff I have, cleaning the Jobo and looking at chemicals.

Of the chemicals in the photo what is possibly useable and what needs to be discarded?
There's some powder Ilford Microphen (parts A & B unopened), Ilford Perceptol (parts A&B unopened), Agfa Rodinal (not sealed), Ilford Washaid (sealed), Ilford Ilfostop (not sealed, Fotospeed SB50 stop bath (not sealed) and some Fotospeed WA50 wash aid (not sealed).

All these chemicals came with the Jobo when I bought it about 10 to 13 years ago so a fair age.

If any of it is usable that'd be great, but I don't want to waste my time with chemicals that aren't worth working with, I'd imagine that'd steepen the learning curve!20211016_143519.jpg
 
My guess is that all of the chemicals that aren't sealed will be past their best. Film is not cheap so why risk getting poor quality results? Safer to start with fresh chemistry which will give you quality and consistency. 10-13 yrs is a long time for chemistry. I've used expired film much older but not chemistry.
 
I've just finished up processing 4 sheets of expired FP4+ (1 exposed about 11 years ago, the other 3 just yesterday from my front door) in old inky dark Agfa Rodinal at 1+100, but new stop bath, fixer and rinse aid. After a bit more digging it seems Rodinal has a very long shelf life and not to be put off by the heavy discolouration.

Errors were no doubt plentiful however the good news is that I have 4 things recognisable as negatives! I'm not sure the rinse aid has been successful as the negatives look a bit mucky at the moment but I'll let them dry and report back once they've been scanned.20211019_162054.jpg
 
Yup, a bit like bbq sauce. If it works it works.
 
Here are three of the negatives, the forth was a bit bland but more due to the exposure. All these are direct scans (V700), no processing or dust removal at all:
img005a.jpgimg006a.jpgimg005a.jpg
The middle image is from maybe 2010ish when a friend and I went to a small foundry. I've no notes on the image so I can only assume I was playing around with selective focus, and not successfully!

I can't really see anything wrong with the development, I think the exposures from my front door are pretty dreadful but then I haven't held a light meter in quite some time. They were also done in haste as there were rain showers coming through intermittently.
 

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Well, as you know, not quite perfectexposures, but the developer seems to have worked.
The foundry shot looks as though you were either trying some extreme swing, or you’ve discovered an entirely new optical principle.
 
I'd say this a pretty solid return to the craft. Now you enter the shoot-evaluate-improve-repeat cycle. I am now nearly 50 years into that practice and I may soon become a good photographer ;)
 
It's interesting that the old foundry shot has come out so well after all these years, which is similar to the sheets of Fomapan 100 I shot last week. The ones that had been at room temperature for maybe 10 years were almost the same as the sheets that had been in the fridge for all that time, which was a surprise.
 
It's been in a fairly stable environment but probably around 12 to 15°C. I did wonder about putting it all in the fridge, but seeing the results I'll stick with the cupboard.

Next question is has the E6 film survived as well...
 
If your E6 has been stored in a similar temperature to your b&w you should be fine. The only expired E6 film I've had problems with was Fuji Sensia. It all ended up with a magenta cast (this was the process paid version which I sent to Fuji for processing right before the deadline when they stopped).
 
Paper doesn’t seem to survive as well as film. They are both silver halides suspended in gelatin, so we might expect them to have similar lives. The contrast seems to reduce. As we don’t “read” negatives directly, perhaps we simply don’t observe this and blame ourselves for not metering the shadows properly.
Colour film has three times as many things to go wrong (at least) and if one layer loses a third of a stop in speed, we have a colour cast, to which we are much more sensitive than a loss of a third of a stop in monochrome.
 
I was hoping to get the exposed E6 sheets sent off to Palm Labs today. Except.....there aren't any. I loaded everything into the dark bag to remove the sheets from the dark slides amd box them up, only to discover they were all empty! Clearly when I last put them away I put them into the 'exposed' box and not the 'empty' box....

So my next job is to load up some sheets of E6 and then expose them. And then re-learn my procedures for dealing with exposed film.
 
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