A few months back I found a couple of rolls of 120 film in a thrift store. One of the rolls was a Kodak Verichrome that expired in 1972. You can see that post here. I had this roll of color film, Kodak Kodacolor-X that expired in 1971. It was an ISO 80 negative film processed in the color development process C-22.
Kodacolor-X is a color negative film that was manufactured by Eastman Kodak between 1963 and 1974. It was introduced along with the Kodak Instamatic cameras which use 126 film.
Wikipedia
The film was designed to be processed in the C-22 process, which is the predecessor to today’s C-41 process.
Only a few specialty labs still process this film, due to the length of discontinuation. Surviving exposed (but unprocessed) Kodacolor-X and C-22 films can still yield color images, although this requires highly specialised development techniques.
I have a roll of film I can’t process, what do i do? I shoot it anyway.
I took this film and loaded it into a Hasselblad 500 C. I shot the film at EI 5. Yeah, 5. I took the camera and tripod out on a nice sunny day in the winter. It was a ton of fun.
How do I develop a roll of Kodacolor-X?
I search the internet high and low and I make it to the Darkroom and they say they can process the film but using B&W chemistry. Well, I could develop my B&W film, so I figured I would just develop it myself.
I suppose I could have done a snip test to try to figure out a good development time, but that is not how I work. I know the film is old and I have no idea how well it was taken care of.
The processing was straightforward.
I decided on a very aggressive development processing time.
- Developer: D76
- Temperature: 24° C
- Time: 15 minutes
- Agitation: 5 seconds once a minute
Digitizing the images.
This was the more difficult than I thought it would be. There is a heavy red cast on the film from the anti-halation layer. My Epson scanner couldn’t pass light through the film. So, I had the idea to just use my Fujifilm camera and Nikkor macro lens and using a strobe as the light source.
It was a little tough to get pictures, but I pulled some out.