Expired COLOR negative and slide film

[BetterSense]

I'm come across the familiar "went digital, cleaning out the closet" pro photographer garage sale. He has several hundred rolls of Kodak Portra and Elite Chrome film, all of it expired by 2 years and some of it as much as 8. It has not been cold stored, but it was stored in his AC'd studio.

I've had very good luck with B&W film expired up to 10 years, and consumer color regative film expired by a few years, but I've never dealt with expired color slide film. What are the chances that the slide film (all of which is 8yrs expired) and negative film (2-5 years expired) is salvagable? I am prepared to scan medium format if I have to remove a color temperature shift.

 

[EASmithV]

It's all crap, send it to me for proper disposal >

As I'm sure you have realized, manufacturers are fairly conservative about thier expiration dates, to be safe. The stuff expired by about 2 years should be fine, but I've never had the opportunity to shoot any Elite chrome expired by more than 3 years, so I cant tell you about the 10 year stuff. My hunch is that It may have slight a red shift, but don't quote me.

 

[EASmithV]

From what I have read, Elite chrome is nothing more than re-branded Ektachrome, while Kodak reserverves the Ektachrome label for the "professional" line, if that helps.

 

[Jayd]

I would approach the guy and say let me try a sample of each before I make and offer on all or commitmet to buy all. I use a fair amout of expired and just bought a buch myself but all is no more than 3 years and is all Fuji and it's a little hard for me to get used to the Fuji Green sky and rather flat colors which seems slightly exeragerated with this 160 NPS My prefrence in film Is Kodak HD in 35mm AKA royal gold which I suspect the new Ekatar is a farther tweak of. Really bad film goes Yellow and red to a point it's near impossible if not impossible to correct. And E6 films will go red and yellow after processing to only Kodachrome is truely stable. BTW I bought what I though was 2 rolls of Fuji Provia 100 120 and ended up with 40 rolls expired in 2006. suposedly cold stored. soon as I get eith my Koni Omega Fixed or this Foldex 6x9 going I'll try some of it< Ireally just bought it to prove cameras with. Well I could use the YashicaMat .
Good luck
Jay

 

[nickandre]

can I have some?

I would grab it and run. 2 years is fine on the portra, 8 is not so much. Take the fresher stuff. At 8 years you're looking at moderate background fog, speed loss, and color shift. You can have some fun with that film, but I wouldn't shoot it for anything serious. It really depends on the price, at least for me. If you can get it cheaply by all means do and then shoot it and see what you get.

 

[removed account4]

if you don't mind being surprised when you get your film back from the lab
buy it and have fun. you might be happy with some of the results.
i often shoot well outdated ( by 4 or 5 years AT LEAST ) poorly stored fuji 800 film
and with each roll i get more interesting prints ... and outdated slide film as well.

buy it and have fun, if you don't want to be anal and serious about everything
but if you are going to worry about your results being flawless don't waste your time or money.

john

 

[BetterSense]

Well in any case, they don't seem to have liked my $.80/roll offer, since they haven't emailed me back.

 

[Jayd]

I paided $19.00 for a 100Ft of the Fuji 160 S pro, The problem is it comes with a 2" core which makes the roll to large for the Bulk loaders I know of Lodys, Alden and Watts. I respooled it onto a normal 1" core I happen to have in my bulk loader a tedious task. As for the disapointing test roll results:my test roll was shot under the near ever present in central ohio overcast sky meaning low contrast, conditions this film seems particularly weak under so I need to make more test shots to give a fair evaluation.
Jay

 

[Jayd]

Price of expired film

I paided $19.00 for a 100Ft of the Fuji 160 S pro, The problem is it comes with a 2" core which makes the roll to large for the Bulk loaders I know of Lodys, Alden and Watts. I respooled it onto a normal 1" core I happen to have in my bulk loader a tedious task. As for the disapointing test roll results:my test roll was shot under the near ever present in central ohio overcast sky meaning low contrast, conditions this film seems particularly weak under so I need to make more test shots to give a fair evaluation.
Jay

 

[Bosaiya]

I use expired Portra all the time. Like anything else, it's good when it's good and when it's bad it's bad. $.80/roll is dirt-cheap, it goes for a few bucks (120) a roll on eBay. Sometimes much more. I'm not surprised they balked.

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

Expired colour neg is usually OK, and if you print it you can always correct the shift with the enlarger.

All the expired slide film I had so far had a bit of a shift towards magenta, and that's kind of annoying: it's seldom enough of a shift to make things odd, but enough to be off-key. YMMV, but if you're going the route of expired colour slide, you definitely want to go the www.hybridphoto.com way!

 

[physi28]

as posted before I have just shot provia 400 stored in hot garage for 9 years or more, fine results