Today’s Post by Joe Farace
It is always the way of events in this life,…no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.—Charlotte Bronte
Why shoot expired film? First, some background: I expected that any results from shooting (expired) Fujicolor NPH 400 would look a lot like Fuji’s version of Kodak’s Portra 400 that all the cool kids on the Internet shoot. As I write this, the Amazon film zombies sell a two-pack of Portra 400 for 64.95 or $32.47 per roll. By comparison, B&H will sell you a five-pack for $84.95 or $16.99 per roll, as I write this.
Some people on eBay are selling expired rolls of NPH 400 for $27.50 a roll plus nine bucks for shipping, I guess, because that film box is so heavy. I shot an expired (2004) roll of Fujicolor NPH 400 in my Contax 167MT at a monthly Cars & Coffee event at the Vehicle Vault in Parker, Colorado. You can read more about my experiences shooting this film in a previous post.
Should You Shoot Expired Film?
Part of the problem in answering this question is defining the word “expired.” One dictionary definition is “no longer valid, having exceeded its period of validity. expired licenses. an expired contract.” The other part of the problem is that the expiration date on a roll of film is different than the expiration date stamped on a bottle of milk. You don’t want to drink that expired milk but you can—and should—shoot expired film.
That expiration date that’s listed on the film box more like is the point in which the film has reached it’s peak of performance. After that, the film is not bad. It’s performance, especially for color film, is just going to start dropping off as time goes nu. One thing that I’ve noticed is that black and white film seems to work quite well at it’s rated ISO speed long—and I mean l-o-n-g after it’s “expiration” date. Color negative film? Not so much, but you can squeeze some extra quality out of it by overexposure. How much? Some Internet pundits say one stop per decade of age and that’s worked for me but I suggest you do your own tests and see the results for yourself.
How I Made this Portrait: I made this portrait of Amy several years ago during a private model shoot in a magazine editor’s hotel room during one of the last the PMA trade shows. I brought a Contax G1 with a 45mm f/2.0 Carl Zeiss Planar lens to the show to make images for an article I was planning to write. I never thought I might be doing a model shoot with it.
This image was originally shot on Kodak color negative film so there’s no EXIF data to show that I initially made a series of portraits of Amy at 1/125 sec, when the flash sync for the Contax G1 was 1/100 sec or slower. I somehow missed the big RED “X” on the shutter speed dial. At this point, my experience could easily have qualified as one of my many “Stupid Photographer’s Tricks” and you can read about and see what these ill-fated images look like in this post. I eventually figured it all out and managed to make (what I thought were) some nice photographs of Amy.
I believe there are at least two reasons why people shoot with expired film. As Mary always says, there’s always a good reason for anything and then there is the real reason. The good reason for shooting expired film is the one all the die-hard film aficionados will probably give you: Unpredictability. Shooting expired film adds another layer of randomness to the inherent Phase I volatility of shooting film. In other words, it’s fun. And you know how I feel about that.The second reason, and I suspect it’s the real reason why many people shoot expired film. and I’ll gladly admit this is absolutely true for me. is that we already have the film and don’t want to spend any more money on buying fresh in-date film. But, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.
I’ve beat the whole hobby horse of shooting expired film to death before and you can read some more, different thoughts on the subject in my post The Misguided Mystique of Shooting Expired Film. In it I quote Bellamy Hunt of Japan Camera Hunter who had this to say about shooting expired film: “The problem is heat and radiation; that tiny but constant dose will eventually turn film into a fogged mess. And even with that degradation, that slow collapse, expired film can still take fantastic pictures. Colour shifts —he’s British—and lack of sharpness can elevate some shots from ordinary to surreal.”