5 Frames with expired Agfa CNS in a Rollei A110 and processed in expired chemicals.

This subminiature stuff tends to drag you in..

While looking at various ways of reloading and re-using 110 cartridges recently, I remembered that I’d come across some 110 film while clearing out my parents’ house. Sure enough there it was.

It was an unopened box of Agfa CNS film – 12 exposures. A glance at the box showed a ‘develop by’ date of 00… My interest was in the cartridge to slice up, but the waste-not-want-not methodology that my father had observed throughout his life suggested that I should shoot and develop the film before descending vulture-like on the Agfa cartridge.

I was slightly surprised that the sealed foil was puffed up and when I loaded the film into my little Rollei A110 the film really resisted winding on to the first frame. Slightly puzzled, I went back to look at the packaging – everything seemed fine. No chemical smells, no signs of damage. I had another look at the develop by date. I’d got it wrong, the film didn’t expire in 2000. That first numeral was an eight… This film died over 44 years ago.

Well, that in itself was a challenge. I looked to check that it was C41. It wasn’t.

It tuns out CNS (Colour Negative Special) was a film from Agfa available between 1968 and 1975 (so I think we can safely call this a 50 year-old film) and which used a proprietary Agfa development process. Later on in the 70s, Agfa switched to C41.

At first, I assumed that choices for developing the film were limited to B&W, but then I came across some internet posts that suggested you could process CNS in C41 chemicals.

Although you can get a result with C41 chemicals, you can’t process at C41 temperatures as this will do terrible things to the CNS emulsion. To go with my 44-year expired film, I had some colour process chemicals made up that were two months past their date. It seemed a match made in heaven!

I found two alternative suggestions online – one using stand development for 40 minutes at 20°c with agitation every 10 minutes and the other at 20°c for 20 minutes with agitation every minute

In the end I went with the second option and followed this up with 20 minutes in the combined BLIX.

In the end the negatives looked a little thin, so longer in the ‘soup’ might have benefited. I’ll know better the next time I develop obscure, long out-of-date films…

Oh well, it wouldn’t be subminiature if there wasn’t lots of visible grain :-). Maybe Black and white would have been better…

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