Found Film Ilford HP3 -200 Weston

Found film is exposed film found in old cameras or in a drawer in a house or garage or some place like that.

With care full development you can often get some interesting pictures.

Your chances of getting an image from a found film depends allot on how the film has been stored since it was exposed.

The type of film can make a big difference to. Fast (sensitive) films tend to degrade faster due to there sensitivity. Slow films tend to yield the best results due to there lesser sensitivity.

The action of time and temperature and solar radiation will cause the film to fog over time. if the fogging is bad you will not be able to see the image, it will be lost in the fog.

With the use of a film developer that keeps fog levels down during development whilst developing the latent image you can get surprisingly good results.

From what I have read in some forums on the Web, Agfa Rodinal, Ilford Microphen and Kodak HC110 are good for this sort of work due to there good anti fogging properties and abilities to pull out the latent image from the film.










Two weeks ago I found on Ebay some exposed rolls of Ilford HP3 200 (Weston) and some Ilford FP3. These films had come from a deceased estate.

When the films arrived in there original metal Ilford cans there was also to my surprise 2 sets of Negatives one is a roll of Agfa Isopan I.S.S and the other is a roll of HP3

A quick look on the web told me that Ilford HP3 200 was on the go from the early 50 to the early 60, it was upgraded to HP3 400. Going on the type of film that I had to develop and the clothing and vehicles in the negatives I got I would say the film was exposed in the early to mid 50's

I clip tested the First roll or film in Kodak X-Tol because thats what I had mixed up, and this is a good dev for fast films. The clip test revealed very little fog in the rolls of HP3 but lots of fog in the FP3, the FP3 cassette looked like it had been opened.

I have a data sheet for these films and came up with a time of 10 minutes for the HP3 in stock X-tol and 8 mins for the FP3

The Fp3 was toatally fogged the other rolls of HP3 yielded some quite good negatives.

The image above is scanned from one of the rolls of HP3 developed in X-Tol

I am not sure where the photograph has been taken it may be Paris? or Occupied Germany?






This shot is from the second roll of HP3 and is rather good considering it was taken so long ago and only developed 2 weeks ago.







And finally this is a scan from one of sets of negatives that was in a film can that came with the films, a real bonus.
More to follow later.