Freezer Problems

[mturner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Marc Turner)]

     My wonderful wife lets me commandeer the vegetable drawer for film, 
     batteries, and paper supplies.  I'd love to have a separate little 
     freezer in my darkroom but haven't had $$ or space to justify it yet.  
     I've always refrigerated my film rather than frozen it because of the 
     following concern:
     
     Most freezers these days are the "frost-free" type.  The way I 
     understand they achieve this is by cycling the temperature up above 
     freezing periodically.  I'm not sure how often this is done, but my 
     impression is several times a day.  Larger frozen items aren't 
     affected much by this except possibly at their surface.  The thin 
     layer of frost that is forming on freezer surfaces is encouraged to 
     sublimate (vaporize) by the higher temperature.  This temperature 
     cycling is part of the reason that frost-free freezers can't preserve 
     food as long as a real "deep freeze" (which also uses lower 
     temperatures).  If you keep ice-cream in one, you've probably noticed 
     that sometimes it is soft and other times hard.  My concern for film 
     and paper emulsions is that this constant freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw 
     cycle is probably a little hard on the gelatin structure.  Has anyone 
     ever seen any research on this?  Maybe the warm-up is too brief to 
     matter, and the film never starts to defrost.  Since I don't really 
     know, I've stuck to the refrigerator until I can get a real freezer.
     
     -- Marc
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