Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Using expired film compounds the uncertainty, like jumping from an airplane with a parachute you just bought at an army surplus store. You don’t know who packed it or what it may have suffered in all the years since then.—Daniel J. Schneider
I have a confession to make: Some of the film that I’ve shot for my Film Friday posts and other blog posts about film photography have been made using expired film. How expired? One roll of Kodak Portra 160 I shot had this written on the box: “Process before 09/2003.” Yup, that film expired 21 years ago!
Expired? What does that mean?
The results of using expired color film typically produced images with decreased sensitivity and contrast and with increased grain and color shifts. I could see all of those conditions in the negatives I shot at the box speed of ISO 160 with my Canon AE-1 Program, that itself is 38-years old. The film was processed by The Darkroom, although the image you’ll see on that particular post was (somewhat) processed using Photoshop. So what did one of my the negatives look like? You can see it at right.
Here’s what some experts, pundits and Internet sage’s have to say on the subject of expired film: PetaPixel says, “One commonly cited rule of thumb for shooting expired film is to add an extra stop of exposure for every decade since the film expired. So if you’re shooting an ISO 1600 roll of film that expired 20 years ago, you should shoot as though it were an ISO 400 roll.” That is not a universal opinion, so as always do your own tests. Based on my tests with the aforementioned Portra 160, the film was about one stop underexposed, so I intend to shoot any remaining rolls I have at ISO 80.
Does black and white film react the same to aging as color negative film? One opinion is that ”if you have black and white film that’s ten years out of date, you can shoot it at box speed. Older than that you will want to give it a bit more exposure, or a little more development time.” As Groucho Marx once said, “who are you going to believe? Me or your own eyes.” Here’s why: An 18-year old roll of Fujifilm Neopan ACROS 100 that I shot in my Canon AE-1 produced perfect negatives at the rated ISO setting. In my recent experience when shooting expired film, black and white film seems less affected by age than color negative film but both seem to react differently depending on the manufacturer as well as how and where the film was originally stored.
How was my film stored? It is generally believed that film typically expires sometime around three years after its manufacture date but in reality it may still be good for another five or six years if stored properly. The Emulsive website says, for “a roll of expired film that was cold stored (ideally in a freezer) from brand new, you can shoot it as if it just came off the production line. Even if the film expired a decade or two ago, you’ll still likely get a result that’s 95-100% that of a fresh roll.” (My own storage regimen is explained shortly.)
How I Made the image Below: The first thing I did was use the Image Rotation> Arbitrary command to get the gazebo’s posts parallel to the frame. Then, instead of using Photoshop’s Levels—that the real levels for this image at left— and slamming those triangles towards the middle, here’s how I processed this image. I started by creating a Duplicate Layer, then set the layer’s Blending Mode to Multiply, while adjusting the Opacity level; in this case it was set at 50%. This got me into the ballpark and then I used Levels to tweak it slightly. Next I used Picto’s iCorrect Portrait to move the colors toward Neutral. Then I used Dfine to minimize film grain. Finally, I hit it ever-so-slightly with Vivenza to give it what I think is a “normal” look. This is just what I did, you can use whatever technique works for you or leave it as-is.
Why shoot expired film anyway? There is an element of surprise in shooting film. For most people, you never really know what you’ve got until the film comes back after processing. If you don’t process it yourself and depending on what the film scene is like where you live, it could be up to two weeks until you receive the processed film back from the lab. Shooting expired emulsions amps up that surprise aspect of shooting film because you really, really don’t know what you’ll get until you get the processed film back from the lab.
In my own case there is one main reason why I shoot expired film and it’s also the same one, I think, other people shoot it too: When I switched to digital capture there was a lot of film left in my refrigerator and barring a few power outages and our move to Daisy Hill, the film has been consistently refrigerated in a compartment separate from food but next to cold drinks. There’s obviously a big difference between refrigerated and frozen and that fact will have an effect on how any film, including mine, ages. For the final word on this subject I’ll leave it to…
Bellamy Hunt of Japan Camera Hunter had this to say, which, I think, answers the question perfectly, “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 and lack of sharpness can elevate some shots from ordinary to surreal.”
PS. I don’t think I’ve beaten this subject to death yet so look for other posts on this subject and I look forward to hearing from you about your own experiences shooting expired film. Click Contact or comment on Instagram (@joefarace) to let me know you you think.
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