Bleach Bypass Development with Expired Vericolor III VPS

I recently purchased a couple expired rolls of Kodak Vericolor III VPS 6006 from my local film store, with a couple experiments in mind but low expectations. For this roll I wanted to attempt bleach bypass processing to boost the contrast of this ~30 year old film and to see if my normal B&W fixer is compatible with the C-41 process. I didn't expect the results of my first test to be so good, so I have very little in the way of photos throughout the process. But I did write down my processing steps so I will be able to share how I shot and developed this film.

The Shoot

I loaded the roll into my handy Holga 120N, with the 645 mask in place. The weather was overcast but dry on the day I went out to shoot, but since I was overexposing the film by a stop (80-100ASA) I brought my tripod, light meter, and shutter release cable along to be as accurate as possible with my exposures.

The Development

All development steps were carried out at 38C, the normal temp for C-41. I used the ADOX C-TEC developing kit, having mixed up half a batch and this roll being the last of the 8-roll capacity for half the kit. The fixer I used is the EcoPro Neutral Fixer. Based on what I've read, it is important for the fixer to be neutral and non-hardening so that it is compatible with color negative film.

Here is my bleach bypass process:

1. Film pre-rinse (two rinses in this case)
2. Normal first step C-41 Developer (using instructions from C-41 kit)
3. Water wash to stop development
4. B&W Fixer (5 minutes 1+4 dilution)
5. Water wash several minutes
6. Stabilizer (1 minute, included in my ADOX kit)
7. Final water rinse and hang to dry

The Results

The film base was a little bit dark to the eye, but the negatives appeared well-exposed. I scanned the negs on my flatbed scanner and here are the results. Click the images to view them full-sized.

Conclusions

For a roll of film roughly 30 years old, I think these results are spectacular. I anticipated that some speed would be lost over time, hence my decision to overexpose by a stop. Bleach bypass development adds approximately a stop of speed as well so in effect I have overexposed this film by 2 stops, which appears to have been the perfect exposure. I hope to try this again on unexpired films, which I will probably underexpose by a stop to see if that speed gain is accurate. Since I use the EcoPro Fixer for developing B&W films and papers anyway, I didn't need to purchase a different product for this test. I'm sure other fixers exist that would work with the process too; I'm eager to see if anyone reading this has success with others and if so, please leave a comment.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see others try this out as well!