Kodak High-speed Infrared film, also known as HIE, is a black-and-white film with extended sensitivity in the infrared zone. It was discontinued in 2007, and all that’s available for the last decade has expired a long time ago.
The problem with the expired infrared film is it goes bad quickly, and often it goes bad bad even when it is well cared for.
I was given a bag of some old, iffy cameras, and in the bag, there were a few rolls of film – Kodak HIE. I got very excited, but then I realized that the bag sat in a friend’s car for at least a week in high temperatures. A week shouldn’t destroy a film, but it certainly can’t help, and it probably wasn’t stored significantly better before that. That was a few years ago, and the film has sat in my fridge ever since, but the damage was already done well before. Also, I got it in a bare plastic canister, with an unknown expiry date. So, a Hail Mary roll.
And finally, I’ve shot the roll.
I shot it in a Nikon FE camera with a Tamron Adaptall-2 24mm F2.5 lens and a random 720nm IR filter, on a nice, sunny day in April in Maksimir Park in Zagreb. I rated it at 50 ASA and developed it in Adox FX-39 II, 1+14 dilution for 10:30 at 19.5°C.
The results are… interesting.
It degraded significantly. Like, dramatically. Thankfully, there’s still some of the landscape recognizable, so at least I haven’t wasted my time. With some dodging and burning, I even managed to get these somewhat presentable photos. Yay!
Interesting, huh? 😅