The "How-Do-I-Shoot-Expired-Slides/Negatives?" Thread

Hi all,

The internet is all over the place when it comes to recommending how to shoot expired slides and negatives. When I purchased my Pentax 67II set 2.5 years ago, the seller included some old film stocks he never used, including Provia 100, Astia 100F, and Velvia 100F. I have absolutely no idea how these were stored, but I assume that these were stored in a cooler-than-normal area considering that the seller was a professional photograher. I purchased the 220 version of Portra 400NC a few weeks ago from a camera shop that claimed it was refrigerated since 2006.



Anyway, here again are the film stocks with the expiration dates with some notes:

-220 Provia 100 (expired October 1999) - I'm not sure if this was frozen/refrigerated or not. I kept it in the refrigerator since I bought the Pentax 67II set, so since in October 2020.
-120 Astia 100F (expired January 2005) - Again, I'm not sure if this was frozen/refrigerated or not. I kept it refrigerated since October 2020.
-120 Velvia 100F (expired January 2005) - Yet again, not sure if this was frozen/refrigerated or not. I kept it refrigerated since October 2020.
-220 Portra 400NC (expired October 2006) - I bought this just a few weeks ago from a used camera shop. They had a ton of these 220 Portra 400NC rolls. I was told that the original owner had kept these rolls refrigerated since he bought them in 2005. It has been sitting in my fridge for a month now, since I bought it.

So three of these are slides/transparencies and one is a negative. I've read that the rule of thumb for expired negatives is to expose over by one stop per decade since the expiration date, however, I'm not sure about the slides/transparencies, particularly the Provia that expired in 1999. The obvious thing to do is bracket, but considering that I only have one roll of each, I wouldn't even know where to start the first bracketed frame.

Any suggestions/recommendations on how to expose these would be very greatly appreciated.

Depends on the effect you want to achieve. What did you have in mind?

ic-racer said:

Depends on the effect you want to achieve. What did you have in mind?

Click to expand...

I'm not looking for any particular creative effect per se. For example, I just want the expired Provia I shoot to look like good old regular Provia (even though I suspect this might be impossible with expired slide film).

a few years ago I was given a shopping bag of expired 120 film, stored at room temp. Most of the expirations ranged from 1990-2003. The mid 90's plus-x was very fogged and barely usable. Oddly the Ektachrome EPP100 expired in 1987 required EI100. There were color shifts, but given the age I shot extra frames at EI50 and those were all washed out.

In the bag was also some provie expired in 2003, and that was still best at 100. There were color shifts, but they weren't as bad as the ektachrome. So I'd expect your slide film will be similar. I don't know why the Plus-x was so bad, and the slide film didn't seem to lose sensitivity.

manfrominternet said:

-220 Portra 400NC (expired October 2006)

Click to expand...

My experience with expired Portra is...not so good. Loss of speed, drastic color shifts and bothersome crossover. Apparently cool-stored, obtained directly from original purchaser, expiry dates around 2010-2013. Maybe the older film you have there fares better. There's hope, I guess?
I've shot a truckload of Fuji Superia 200 that expired around 20 years ago and some C200 from the same era. This had a slight speed loss, drastic increase in base density, significant color shift, but crossover was minimal. As a result, this mostly prints quite alright, as opposed to the Portra, which always ends up looking yuckie to my eyes.

There is the general "drop a stop per decade" that kinda works. With black and white, especially 35mm, it's pretty easy to shoot a couple of frames and then test in whatever developer you use. Colour is a pain, especially 120, because it's harder to test. With all your rolls being different, I think I'd rather sell them.

Your three 100 films may still be fine to shoot at 100 but that doesn't mean the colour will still be good. I know that when you cross-process Velvia in C41, you get a negative that you can enlarge in b&w very nicely, though....

The 'stop per decade' rule ( up to two decades ) is fine for all negative film, but rate and process colour reversal normally.

John S

I've shot some of my 15 year-old color negative film (kept frozen) with good results. About a stop overexposed. I've shot some expired film bought from a pro, presumably kept in cold storage but it came out underexposed despite the overexposure. But still usable.

Can't help with slide film. Gave away all my expired stock even though it was kept frozen. Processing is too expensive to experiment.

So hit and miss overall. Hard to justify using film with an unknown history.

If the film has been refrigerated all the time or most of the time, just shoot it at box speed. That has never failed me in over 20 years of shooting refrigrated film: slides, print - color and black & white, infrared including HIE, Konica and Rollei.

Since you only have one roll of each there isn’t much opportunity to test. So with the knowledge of the unknowns it really doesn’t matter where you start but how much you bracket. I’d probably start at box speed and bracket generously. You might actually get a frame that’s properly exposed. And same could be true if you adjusted the EI for a predicted loss of speed and bracketed.

The old film that I have is kept for novelty purposes and I generally buy new film to shoot.

The thing with slide film is that the exposure latitude of those stocks is pretty limited from the get go. So you don't have much leeway to play with.
But I have some friends who sometimes shoot the stuff at box speed and get some fairly dark images when the contrast of the scene is not too great.

As for color negative, I haven't shot anything fresh in years and am happy with the results when applying the 1 stop per decade rule. Since color neg film tends to like being overexposed, I use that to my advantage. But be aware that there will be color shifts, so those films are more suited to scanning magic than RA-4 enlarging.

The slower the film the better it keeps. I find the 1 stop per decade rule is appropriate for 400 speed films, but 100 speed might only need a third stop. I would shoot the slide films at box speed.