Old C-41 (and ECN-2) film development

Factual Questions
1

I have six exposed rolls of C-41 process Kodak Gold Max 35mm film (5x400 speed and 1x100). I most likely shot these rolls when I was in high school sometime before graduating in 2001. I believe they’ve been stored under 90 degrees Fahrenheit since then, and over half of them in black plastic film canisters. Is it worth getting one of them developed, or have cosmic rays/time/temperature/chemical processes degraded these past anything but near forensic developing techniques? Does anyone have experience with developing C-41 film that was exposed a long time ago?

Same question for the SFW-XL roll. I have far less hopes for this one, since Seattle Film Works is defunct. Anyone have any experience with developing old SFW-XL (ECN-2) film?

2

These folks will do it.

Just one of the results of a search for “C-41 Film Processing”

3

I just had some film developed by Blue Moon.

Some was Minox from the early 1980’s and it had usable images on it. The other was C41 from 1995 or so, and it was very low-contrast, but also had usable images.

I say “go for it!”

4

“I believe they’ve been stored under 90 degrees Fahrenheit since then…”

That is HOT for photographic film.

You will get usable images, but they may look somewhat underexposed, as the film loses sensitivity over time, and you will almost certainly get a purplish color cast. However, you can probably correct that in printing, as there are some amazing digital photo-editing programs out there - I got them to improve archival family photos, some of which only existed as bad prints.

5

Boutique (the place GaryM linked also does SFW’s ECN-2 processing.

6

Thanks for the suggestions. Sounds like I can expect lower contrast and a purple color cast.

I’ll have to send in a few rolls and see how they come back. I’ll have to blame the poor focus and framing on something else.

7

I had some film I had taken and developed years ago, but had vastly under-exposed. (The film barely had images on it). By scanning the developed negatives (Canoscan 8800) I could use photoshop to get passable images from it even though direct prints were useless. Gotta love computers.

So if you have a means to scan them, just get the film developed unless prints also are super cheap. Then if there are any memorable photos, you can clean them up in post-processing, just like they do in Hollywood.