Accidentally left my film in the trunk during a heatwave

I was shooting around downtown Austin last July and left a roll of Portra 400 in my car for like 4 hours. When I developed it at home the colors were all weird and the base looked foggy. Has anyone else had film get cooked by heat like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

adamr141d ago

yeah that sounds like heat damage for sure. portra is tough but leaving it in a trunk in austin summer is basically asking for trouble. was the trunk black or dark colored because those interiors just soak up heat like crazy. what kind of weird colors did you get like a green shift or more of a magenta mess? i had a roll get baked in my glovebox once and the shadows went all purple and grainy. also how long did you wait between shooting and developing because sometimes the latent image degrades faster in heat.

christopher9431d ago

@adamr14 you got a point about the trunk color but actually heat damage shifts colors kinda randomly based on what layer gets cooked first. that purple shadow issue you had sounds like the blue layer got fried, which is common. waited about two weeks on mine and the greens went all weird, like swamp water.