Expired Portra 160NC, Should I Bother to shoot it?

[jgwetworth]

Title Pretty much says it all, I got some Portra 160 that expired in '07 and from what i know has been refrigerated since It will be a bit of trouble to shoot and develop so I was wondering is it worth shooting. And what can I expect the results to look like?

 

[Pasto]

Not for something important, but my experience is that it will be "good" if stored properly.

 

[BrianShaw]

I've been having decent experience with that film, at that age... properly stored, of course.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

slow-speed color neg film generally holds up very well even past the expiry date. I had some 10+ year expired Fuji NPS 160 and had no problems at all with the color. It MIGHT be hard to maintain exactly precise color matching from roll to roll with it, so if you were going to use it for a shoot for a catalog or advertisement where they needed to be able to guarantee that the specific shade of red on the car fender/dress/whathaveyou in reality is reproduced in the final print run without throwing off other colors, then no, I wouldn't shoot it. But this is color negative film, and it's Portra, which does an amazing job of handling mixed lighting conditions and other sub-optimal situations, so I wouldn't worry at all about shooting it.

 

[jgwetworth]

Well I Shot some today and Developed It in flexicolor chems, And all that I got was numbers and lines at the edges of the film that say what type it is What could have caused this?

 

[Sirius Glass]

It should be good. Shoot it and enjoy it!

 

[lxdude]

Well I Shot some today and Developed It in flexicolor chems, And all that I got was numbers and lines at the edges of the film that say what type it is What could have caused this?

You did run it through a camera first, right?

 

[jgwetworth]

Hah, Yeh Its a rather old camera. Think it could be broken? EDIT: Just developed some rolls shot in a different camera, and they came out fine, guess it was just the camera.

 

[BrianShaw]

Ya, I guess.

 

[Pioneer]

I have had pretty good luck with expired color film. Kodak 160 from 2007 is a bit on the old side but if you set the ISO for 100 it will probably look great. I have some Fuji NPZ Pro 800 that works good at 800, but looks gorgeous yet at ISO 400. It has been kept in cold storage since new so I'm sure that helps a bit. My avatar pic was made with this film.

 

[Roger Cole]

I have Agfa Optima *400* older than that which is perfect, but it's reportedly been frozen the entire time. Try a roll to test but my guess would be if it's been refrigerated since new it will be completely fine.

 

[newcan1]

I have close to 3,000 ft of Portra NC 160, which is un-perforated, which I shoot in a modified Nikkormat. So far it has always performed as new with no problems (various expiry dates from 2007 to newer). It is amazing film. FWIW, I have had very good luck with film that has always been refrigerated -- For example, I have some Fuji Super HG that expired in 1998, that I have owned and kept in the fridge since then, that seems as good as new. If the film has always been refrigerated, I'll wager that it is as good as new.