I'm new at LF and just bought a ton (well maybe 1/2 ton) of different types of film to experiment with my new LF camera.The salesmen at Glazers in Seattle told me that Polaroid film should never be refrigerated, that it would affect the film. But on the package it states that the film can be refrigerated.I have bought both color and B&W. Ok, what is it that Polaroid is not telling us about their film? It probably doesn't really matter but I would like to know if I can store it beyond its suggested pull date in a frigerator. Thanks for any feedback..Robert C. Warner

-- Robert C. Warner (bpna@msn.com), January 28, 2002

Answers

The booklet "Polaroid Black & White Films" states the following:

"Film should be stored at or below 70 deg F, and refrigeration is recommended as long as the foil wrap is unbroken. Do not freeze the film, however. After removing the film from the refrigerator, allow the film to warm to room temperature for at least two hours before breaking the seal."

-- Michael Briggs (MichaelBriggs@earthlink.net), January 28, 2002.

Morning all, Robert, Refrigerators are not ideal cold storage, as they are wet. UNOPENED Polaroid film, at a temp of 50 degs. 45% or lower humidity, will work best. Mt cellar at home is 60% RH. 50 degs. and kills color film in 3 days, what happens is that the envelope, is hydroscopic, by nature and absorbs as much moisture as it can, then this moisture bleeds in to the film. Polaroid Films are unique, because of the positive and negative are in contact face to face in the packets.

The film should never be frozen as the chemicals in the pods will either separate upon warmup or they might burst in the freezer.

Bill

-- Bill Jefferson (jefferw@polaroid.com), January 28, 2002.

Bill wht about unopened foil pcks of sheets int he fridge?

-- Ted Harris (slberfuchs@aol.com), January 29, 2002.

I bought some outdated Polaroid film and mistakenly put it in the refigerator in the unheated garage. Big mistake. When winter arrived and the garage temperature went below the recommended film threshold, the chemicals in the packet essentially dried out and it all became unuseable. In some cases, the whole film packet separated before I could even load it in the holder.

-- Roger Urban (roger_urban@yahoo.com), February 01, 2002.

I used to manage a pro-line photo shop in Atlanta. We were one of the largest large-format Polaroid dealers. One tech rep said it was OK for limited color storage. Another one told us "no way". With that kind of "definitive" direction from Polaroid, we ran our own experiments. Results: in the 50-70 degree, LOW humidity storage area, we had no problems with factory sealed packages. If the humidity was allowed to drift up past 60%, even the factory sealed units had problems ranging from inconsistent developing to separated chemical pods.

Our final choice for our store stock? ... unrefrigerated storage. As a result, in 12 years, we never had a temperature related complaint about the Polaroid film.

I've been doing large format commercial photography since 1980 and I do not use refrigerated storage for any Polaroid products.

Good Luck Troops!

-- Deloye Burrell (deloyebur@cs.com), April 19, 2002.