What is in the fridge
Antti, of the Juhannus mökki, came round last weekend, opened my fridge looking for milk and asked why there was film next to the carrots. I counted this afternoon, mostly out of curiosity.
The bottom drawer, the one meant for vegetables, currently holds:
- four rolls of Ilford HP5 Plus, still boxed
- two rolls of Kodak Tri-X, one yellow box slightly crushed
- three rolls of Fomapan 100, left over from the summer
- two exposed rolls in a small plastic bag, waiting for the lab
- half a cucumber that should not be there
Film is a chemical product and it ages. Heat and humidity speed that up. Old film loses speed and contrast and picks up a grey veil of fog. Black and white is more forgiving than colour, but a cold, dark drawer still slows all of it down, and in July my kitchen is the warmest room in the flat. The only rule is to take a roll out an hour or so before loading, so it warms up without condensation forming on it. I learned that one by reading, for once, not by ruining something.
The bag of exposed rolls is for peace of mind. I rewind all the way, so the leader disappears into the cassette and there is nothing to load by mistake, but I like them kept apart anyway.
The other reason I count is money. Prices move every time I go into the shop, never down. Tri-X is the one that hurts now, and I stand in front of the shelf doing sums before I take a box. Fomapan is still the cheapest of the three by a clear margin, which is part of why I use it in summer, when a slow film costs me nothing. HP5 sits in between. It is the film I actually trust, so most of the money goes there. Much of this summer's film went through the camera on the Archipelago Trail.
People online buy film in bulk and keep it in a chest freezer. I do not have a chest freezer. I have a small freezer compartment that is mostly ice. So I buy a few rolls at a time, when I am passing the shop anyway, and put them in the drawer with the earliest expiry date at the front, like milk in a supermarket. None of the dates are close. There is a rule of thumb about giving old film one extra stop of exposure per decade past its date, which I have read in many places and tested in none.
Next on the list is developing at home. The lab is good, but the cost per roll adds up next to the film itself. I have been reading about Rodinal, which people say keeps for years after opening and seems to be the usual partner for Fomapan. My bathroom has no window. For once that might be useful.
I have not bought anything yet. The carrots, for the record, are older than any of the film.