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Storing films - cold balcony or room temperature basement?


Finnkare

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If you had two choices where to store your films, which one would you choose:

 

- in a basement locker of a modern apartment building with room temperature and stable moisture

- in a "glass" balcony of the same building with temperatures in the next six months ranging from -25 celcius to +10 celcius, humidity changing randomly (almost at the very sealine of the baltic sea - FMI - Weather and Climate - Climate in Finland)

 

I have cardboard boxes and also a wooden box for them if necessary. Almost all of the films are in their original cardboard packages and all in their plastic cans (minus the 120-films which don't of course have a plastic can, only the foil).

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Ah, maybe I would have needed to be more precise: if you had these two and only these two options, which one would you choose?

 

My freezer is too small and my fridge can hold only so much. The rest of the films have to choose between those two options mentioned.

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Put it in the basement--constant temperature and humidity, why stress the emulsion more than you need to?

 

That's what I have figured myself and that's the status quo. My friend just thought that the humidity and temperature changes wouldn't matter, and the colder temperature would help.

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If you had two choices where to store your films, which one would you choose:

 

- in a basement locker of a modern apartment building with room temperature and stable moisture

- in a "glass" balcony of the same building with temperatures in the next six months ranging from -25 celcius to +10 celcius, humidity changing randomly (almost at the very sealine of the baltic sea - FMI - Weather and Climate - Climate in Finland)

 

I have cardboard boxes and also a wooden box for them if necessary. Almost all of the films are in their original cardboard packages and all in their plastic cans (minus the 120-films which don't of course have a plastic can, only the foil).

 

I keep my film B&W 35mm in our room cupboard, stable 18c and paper is kept in an no longer used brief case in the cellar of our stone terrace house, av 8c to 18c seasonal variation. Never experienced a keepage problem for last 32 years. I have tried the freezer with Kodachrome II but the the room cupboard is as good as anywhere. The most critial issue here is not where you store it, it is where your supplier stored it. Any amount of freezing is totally pointless if your retailer stores photographic material in the back of a warm shop and a lot of them do just that so it can still be a lottery

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Guest AgXlove
Ah, maybe I would have needed to be more precise: if you had these two and only these two options, which one would you choose?

 

My freezer is too small and my fridge can hold only so much. The rest of the films have to choose between those two options mentioned.

 

Here's an idea, do with it what you will -

 

You could also buy a dormitory room sized refrigerator to store your film in. Some models are not much bigger than a microwave oven; they don't take up much room and can be bought for the cost of 20 or 30 rolls of Fuji Velvia (give or take). This is not a large investment, compared to the cost of our M cameras and lenses, not to mention the cost of film...

 

As far as temperature, I understand that Fuji requires retailers to refrigerate their professional color emulsions (both C41 and E6) at 40'F (4'C). Pretty much any refrigerator is capable of maintaining this temperature.

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My freezer is too small and my fridge can hold only so much. The rest of the films have to choose between those two options mentioned.

 

You can buy freezers for price of 100 rolls of film and less, so if you plan to keep film seriously and in relatively larger quantities, I would buy freezer. I dedicate one of freezers we used to keep food in just for film and paper and in it is value of film and paper significally larger than freezer's value.

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