Expiration Date

My good pal Steven is sort of the king of expired film. It makes up the bulk of what he shoots, often taking advantage of the low saturation to make esoteric double exposures. I’m sort of new to expired film myself—I’ve shot it occasionally over the years, but more recently added it to my regular rotation.

Expired film is almost wholly unpredictable. The age of the film usually matters less than how it was stored—heat especially has a detrimental effect on film and can render the roll unusable if not kept in cooler conditions. You can find expired film on eBay pretty easily but even the most reliable sellers often don’t know much about where the film has been before they came into it, so any roll bears the risk of not developing images. I’ve had good luck so far, both with expired film I bought from sellers online and rolls gifted to me by friends who found a random roll in a drawer, but even the best expired film often has some limitations.

Most of the expired color film I’ve shot develops a bit underexposed and soft, as seen in the images in this post, which are unedited aside from basic color corrections done when scanned by the lab. Sometimes I like that, but good, bright daylight is your best bet. I shot the above shots just before sunset in a shady area, and the two photos below on the same evening but in more direct light. You can see where the latter two still have the slightly muted effect of expired film without losing as much color saturation.

I’ve shot some black and white film that expired in 1997 (images not featured in this post) that came out beautifully, completely unable to tell the film was expired, and some other black and white that developed with a sepia tone due to the condition of the film (also beautiful). Most of what I photograph isn’t that important in the scheme of things—I rarely take on paid work, and most likely wouldn’t shoot expired film for a hired job unless it was requested, and most of my other work is part of ongoing series in which if the shot doesn’t come out, there will be more opportunities to try it again. I have yet to shoot a roll of expired film that did not come out at all or did not make me happy, but it can happen, and there’s nothing lost if it does.

All images in this post were shot on the same roll of Kodak UltraMax 400, expired in 2008 and purchased on eBay. Thank you for reading, you’re beautiful.