This year Ye Olde Photographer planned to use some Kodak Panatomic-X in his Argus C-3, assuming the film was still usable. We were gifted a sealed-in-box 100 foot bulk roll. The box shows an expiration date of December 1988 which makes some sense, as Kodak discontinued production in 1987. Since slow films tend to degrade more slowly, it seemed reasonable to at least run some test shots. It is believed the film was not refrigerated during those 26 or 27 years; we could hope it wasn't left in an attic! We spooled off about 12 exposures worth into a reloadable cassette and went off wandering on a Sunday morning.

Perhaps fortunately, YOP has a Kodak darkroom Dataguide from the 1960s that shows some of the films no longer in production today. It appeared for average contrast, 4.5 minutes in HC110 Dilution B, 1+31, (at 68º) was good. Since YOP uses HC110 at unofficial Dilution H, 1+63, as a one shot, he doubled the development time to nine minutes. The results were quite surprisingly good; we might add a little developing time next time, but all frames were quite decent. We metered at ISO 32 and bracketed a bit for the test shots, but all appeared usable.

Oooops! Whilst prepping for Argus Day on 13 August 2014, Ye Olde Photographer discovered the aperture blades in his 50mm Coated Cintar seemed to be seriously out of kilter. In addition, they did not move as the aperture dial was changed. That would seem to cast some doubt about the reliability of the tests shown here as to precision, since YOP has no idea when this problem first manifested itself. So on Argust 14th we bracketed a bit and hoped for the best.