Can expired E6 film fail entirely?

Sirius Glass · Oct 15, 2022

blee1996 said:
I think @Terryro has a good point. I will try to develop it in B&W soup.

It might work better is developer was used instead of soup. What a waste of food whether or not it is good.

Terryro · Oct 15, 2022

blee1996 said:
I think @Terryro has a good point. I will try to develop it in B&W soup.

The B&W image is developed by the E-6 first developer proportionally in each dye sensitive layers. Not sure of the chemical make up of that compared to traditional B&W chemistry. Just a thought. Might want to use E-6 developer instead of straight B&W at color temps. I've tried color neg film as B&W with traditional developer. Really grainy image. Interested to see your results.

kato330am · Oct 16, 2022

Your story reminds me of this video. These guys had a similar experience with Ektachrome 100 Plus. The expiration date seems to be the same than yours, 12/2006.

I shoot slides myself and use expired films too. I have never had a totally blank roll. Even Agfachrome 1000 RS from the early 90's has provided an image.

With Agfachrome 1000 RS, there has been heavy fogging, blue color cast and lots of grain, but the film has worked at box speed, ISO 1000.

Alan Edward Klein · Oct 16, 2022

kato330am said:
Your story reminds me of this video. These guys had a similar experience with Ektachrome 100 Plus. The expiration date seems to be the same than yours, 12/2006.

I shoot slides myself and use expired films too. I have never had a totally blank roll. Even Agfachrome 1000 RS from the early 90's has provided an image.

With Agfachrome 1000 RS, there has been heavy fogging, blue color cast and lots of grain, but the film has worked at box speed, ISO 1000.

This is the same EPP film as the OP's. No? These poor guys bought ten packs of five and all were no good.

Sonynolta User · Oct 16, 2022

Definitely give it the B&W dev test. The first developer in E-6 is essentially a glorified B&W developer.

There's nuts (I'm one of them) that have used high powered HC110 as a first developer, then light fogged the film, used a color dev (even C41 dev), bleach and fix, and got color transparencies out of it. Whether they're good or not, is another discussion.

blee1996 · Oct 16, 2022

@kato330am thanks for the video. I think it looks exactly from the same batch. At least I did not buy 50 rolls!

kato330am · Oct 17, 2022

No problem. Hopefully this thread helps people to avoid the damaged batch.

MattKing · Oct 17, 2022

kato330am said:
No problem. Hopefully this thread helps people to avoid the damaged batch.

There is a very, very, very high likelihood that the problem with that film was more to do with how those particular rolls were handled/stored over the previous ~15 years than it was with the film itself.

kato330am · Oct 17, 2022

Yes, absolutely.

Arcadia4 · Oct 17, 2022

MattKing said:
There is a very, very, very high likelihood that the problem with that film was more to do with how those particular rolls were handled/stored over the previous ~15 years than it was with the film itself.

Yes, the cartons seem to be in packaging for the Brazilian market, but have been over labelled in Spanish for Kodak Mexico and guessing they've not been cool stored since they left official channels.. If they had then the results could have looked something like these (same film in 35mm, 15 yrs old, but cool stored) -

Trying Kodak Ektachrome 100 Plus Professional For The First Time - First Roll Review

My travels have brought me to Kodak Ektachrome 100 Plus Professional. Can I conquer this expired slide film as a man who has only shot slide film once in the past?

50mmf2.com

Seems to be a lots of this around looking on ebay, so someone has unearthed a few boxes worth

blee1996 · Oct 17, 2022

I sent the ebay seller a polite note that he should consider not selling these film any more, since there are more than one people get zero images out it. I took my risk and learned my lessons. Lets see if he/she agrees.

Sirius Glass · Oct 17, 2022

blee1996 said:
I sent the ebay seller a polite note that he should consider not selling these film any more, since there are more than one people get zero images out it. I took my risk and learned my lessons. Lets see if he/she agrees.

Notifying eBay would be a good step to save others from badly handled film.

Alan Edward Klein · Oct 18, 2022

Because of problems I've had with receiving expired dated batteries and recent dated film (3 months to the expiration date), I won't buy these from Amazon any longer. Frankly, there are loads of scams from people who sell inferior products and knockoffs through them with apparently little monitoring from Amazon. They;re just too big. Also, stuff can sit for months maybe years on Amazon shelves in their central warehouses before shipping.

blee1996 · Oct 19, 2022

After my message, the ebay seller did reply and took down the listing.

Sirius Glass · Oct 19, 2022

blee1996 said:
After my message, the ebay seller did reply and took down the listing.

Alan Edward Klein · Oct 20, 2022

blee1996 said:
After my message, the ebay seller did reply and took down the listing.

Did you get your money back?

blee1996 · Oct 30, 2022

In the name of science and self torture, I got a few Ektachrome Plus EPP100 film from another expired batch. And this batch seems to be half way from usable to totally lost. You can see the color dye is definitely fading, e.g. some of the blues are missing so the sky has this purplish tint. And overall there is this milky haze. Even the edge of the film, which should be jet black, now has a purplish dark gray tint. With some tweaking in scanning software (levels), I can still get usable images. But there is quite strong color shift, which is difficult to totally remove in post. Of course, you can always use it as is for its unique pastel color palette.

Side by side comparison: left is expired EPP100, right is fairly fresh Fuji Astia 100F. Both processed in the same tank.

Alan Edward Klein · Oct 30, 2022

Stop torturing yourself and use only fresh film.

Sonynolta User · Oct 30, 2022

If you still have a roll to torture yourself, I've heard that crossprocessing in c41 as a negative may work.
I guess you could verify this for me (us)
I have some expired E100 of unknown provenance, so I may be joining you soon.
Mine is in 4x5 and aquired at a 'worth a shot' price. My LF work is no where near Ansel quality, I'm still learning...

blee1996 · Oct 30, 2022

@Sonynolta User I will definitely try that route. I have both C41 and ECN-2 chemicals to experiment with.

At least for fresh Ektachrome, it should be able to get interesting results by x-pro in ECN-2 color chemicals. Over-expose a lot, control the lighting contrast, and do color grading later on like in Euphoria season 2:

Marcell Rév adopts an EKTACHROME approach for 'Euphoria' in pursuit…

The most fundamental and creatively impactful change for "Euphoria" season 2 was a switch to an all-film format.

www.kodak.com

BTW, I ordered some fresh Euphoric 100 film from Atlanta Film Co. So I will have fresh and reasonably priced Ektachrome in 135 again!

thuggins · Nov 9, 2022

I had the exact same experience with five rolls of expired VS, but from a reputable vendor. Just like yours, there was nothing on the film, not even the rebate. At the time I assumed it was X ray fogging. But it is certainly possible that the dye couplers deteriorated and didn't form an image during the color developer step.

Sirius Glass · Nov 9, 2022

thuggins said:
I had the exact same experience with five rolls of expired VS, but from a reputable vendor. Just like yours, there was nothing on the film, not even the rebate. At the time I assumed it was X ray fogging. But it is certainly possible that the dye couplers deteriorated and didn't form an image during the color developer step.

X-rays tend to leave wavy lines down the length of the film.

Snowfire · Nov 14, 2022

Here is something shot on 40-year-old Ektachrome. The original had poor color balance and contrast, but a salvageable image was very much there, and all margin markings were present and legible. If there is no trace of any markings or image at all, something in addition to age is at work--perhaps a defective batch of film, or some kind of extreme damage such as heat or chemical contamination causing emulsion destruction or stripping.

Roger Cole · Nov 15, 2022

blee1996 said:
In the name of science and self torture, I got a few Ektachrome Plus EPP100 film from another expired batch. And this batch seems to be half way from usable to totally lost. You can see the color dye is definitely fading, e.g. some of the blues are missing so the sky has this purplish tint. And overall there is this milky haze. Even the edge of the film, which should be jet black, now has a purplish dark gray tint. With some tweaking in scanning software (levels), I can still get usable images. But there is quite strong color shift, which is difficult to totally remove in post. Of course, you can always use it as is for its unique pastel color palette.

Side by side comparison: left is expired EPP100, right is fairly fresh Fuji Astia 100F. Both processed in the same tank.

View attachment 320380

Where did you get "fresh" Fuji Astia?

As far as I know it was discontinued quite a few years ago, though I forget exactly when. I really liked it. I have a few rolls frozen that I hope are still good.

blee1996 · Nov 15, 2022

Roger Cole said:
Where did you get "fresh" Fuji Astia?

As far as I know it was discontinued quite a few years ago, though I forget exactly when. I really liked it. I have a few rolls frozen that I hope are still good.

I bought a small lot (20 or so rolls of 120) shortly after they were discontinued, and kept in cold storage since. The expiration date is 2006-09, but they are "fresh" in terms of image quality and ISO ratings. I particularly like their rendition of skin tone and people, both in natural and flash lighting. But since there is so little choice in fresh chromes nowadays, I use them for general photography as well.

Can expired E6 film fail entirely?

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