How long can an undeveloped roll keep? Don’t light, heat, and age bleed in after a time?
It depends on storage conditions.
Cool and dry = years
Yes, but black & white film is much more stable than color film and if printed on acid free paper can last at least a century and a half. I still have an original photo of my great-great grandfather taken in 1850. It is in perfect condition.
It is matter of heat, humidity and the type of storage. Most of the flaws in what you are seeing is the invasion of light as the paper became more loose. If you were to put the film in a sealed box, and stuck it in a controlled enviornment it should last many years.
The other issue that would be of concern is some of the formulae used has changed over the years. In order to get optimum results you might have to re-formulate the developer for those specific films.
I’ve processed rolls from the 50’s without a lot of degradation.
The contrast on these could have been kicked up a little bit in the post processing. But other than that, they look like the same horrible snapshots we take every day.
Its funny, I have been reading some letters from uncles writing from the front. They all asked for film in their letters home. Seemed to be the only thing they wanted. I would love to get my hands on it now, but they were probably thrown away 60 years ago.