Expired Film Can Be Fun
For anyone that has even a passing interest in film photography, you have probably noticed there seems to be a plethora of options to choose from when buying a roll of film. There are options for different styles of shooting, color temperature, each brand offers different film speeds and sometimes the film has a characteristic that makes it especially good for a very particular subject. An example would be when someone chooses Cinestill 800t to take pictures of neon or a gas station at night because they like the glow the lights create in the photos. Some brands like Revolog have made entire lines with artificial artifact on the film stock like scratches, color shifts and even static electricity discharge. It's certainly a fun novelty when you are expecting it, though I have not used any of them yet. I do have a roll of “scratched” film I received in a mystery box a few years ago but have yet to figure out the situation I want to use it for. Regardless of what anyone chooses to shoot with, it tends to run on the expensive side, and is only getting more expensive. One way some photographers have chosen to combat this (me included) is to shoot expired films.
Film is like most other consumable goods; it has a date the manufacturer considers to be a cut off for when the end customer can reasonably expect it to be the same as the day it was created. Over time the chemicals start to break down and become less predictably sensitive to light once exposed. This break down can be slowed by keeping it in cold storage and there are a few cases of companies finding bunch of deep freeze stored stock they can resell. Film Photography Project Retro Chrome is the only one of these I’ve used, and it did not turn out right. I am to blame for the weird turnout I assume. I’m not sure what I did wrong, but it was all dark blue when I had it developed. The more common option of shooting expired film is to literally find a roll in a closet, cabinet, garage or stored in an old camera bag. This creates a much less predictable change in the photos, and there has been an entire community of folks that seek these rolls out just to see what results they can get. I’ve had the “pleasure” of shooting a handful of these and it’s either been very good or subjectively terrible. I did have one creepy jack-o-lantern picture turn out from the bad roll I kind of like though.
The worst roll I’ve ever shot came from a garage sale Canon T50 that had been sitting in an unprotected attic for at least 20 years according to the lady I got it from. She gave me a good deal on it because I helped her bring down an old bench from the rafters. It was a roll of Kodak Gold 200 which typically has a brownish tone and reasonable graininess. It ended up looking like there was a haze over the photos with more grain and had darkness that a 1970’s horror movie would be thrilled to have. Only 7 images even showed up out of the 24 I shot, but they are all gloriously weird.
A more typical find would be something from the 2010-2013 timeframe. This is when digital cameras were starting to surpass film quality, so people were putting what they had away and forgetting about it for the last decade or more. The rule of thumb I’ve been told is to overexpose by one stop for every 10 years it’s expired. If there’s no visible date, or it’s already in the camera I assume it’s from around this time and shoot 400 iso at 200, and 100 iso at 50. For some reason every expired roll I’ve had the last 2 years is either Kodak Gold 200 or Kodak Ektar 100, and both have given me some nice pastel images. I wouldn’t use them for my portfolio, but they look nice. It tends to make peoples skin look reddish pink I think, so I try to just get city and naturescapes.
In My Favorite Things blog post I mentioned, I really like to shoot Kodak BW400CN. It was discontinued in 2014, so obviously it is well past expired at this point. This is one stock I just load and shoot at box speed, and it turns out nice. I don’t have anything extra to say about this, but if I ever find a brick of it, I certainly hope it’s priced well because I will absolutely buy it.
One last thought about shooting expired film is entirely theoretical. I don’t shoot slide film because my local film shop doesn’t have the chemicals to develop it. Everyone I have talked with says you should not try to shoot at anything but box speed and hope for the best. If you want a roll to try out for yourself, I have some in my freezer I am pretty sure is dated 2009. I have no idea how I ended up with this stuff, but I am never going to say no when someone offers it to me.
Thank you again for spending time with me today. Please go out show someone you love them.