As part of a Darkroom pickup I obtained three (3) free bulk loaders. Two of the loaders had film still inside & one was brand new never used & all were still in their box’s.
The first used one had a tape label, FP4 August 1980 & the other had ILford HP5 400 ASA 17 meters.
The condition of the film was unknown, however the feeling I got from Kest was that he was a thorough meticulous man & would have kept the film in a cool dry place. Still I thought a few test rolls were in order. During the second test roll I realized that I had an opportunity to test the Kest film with some in date Kodak 400 Tmax, as I had another Canon F1 loaded with it.
So I mounted the two Canon F1’s side by side with the same 24mm f2.8 lens, on the left in date Kodak 400 Tmax & on the right 37 year old Kest HP5.
I kitchen developed both films as per normal guide lines using the Massive DevChart for developing times & Kodak D76 for both (all I had), the results were surprisingly good.
Below is scans of both frames with as little as possible post editing. The top image is the 37 year old ILford HP5 & the bottom is the in date Kodak 400 Tmax.
Should be good for about 25+ rolls out of the loaders, plenty to use for getting back into kitchen developing & shooting B & W film again.
Next test roll for the Kest HP5 will be shot at 200 ASA to see what if any difference it will make, others on the web say one stop for every decade of time. Not sure I will need all three stops looking at these test shots.
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