I’ve been meaning to write this post for a week or so now and have already posted a few pictures from this roll, but here is the bona-fide “Expiryment”.
This time around, I had a roll of Kodak Elite Chrome 200 which had expired in 2003. It’s not the first.time I’ve shot a roll of this film from this vintage, although I didn’t write anything specific about it at the time apart from how well I thought it had held up.
Given the nice results I got last time, I was fairly confident that I would have a similar experience this time around too. Alas, it wasn’t quite the same and, although the two rolls were the same brand, the same age, and had been stored in the same way since I acquired them, this time I encountered some problems.
My chosen method for shooting slide film is to expose it at box speed, no matter how expired it is. While expired reversal film usually benefits from extra light in the form of exposure, slide film seems to maintain its original narrow exposure latitude and any significant deviation from this will quickly result in blown highlights or crushed shadows. Of course, while the latitude may remain the same, this doesn’t mean that other things haven’t changed, and the dyes can degrade, resulting in colour shifts. This is what had happened with this roll.
Upon receiving the sheet of positives back from the lab they looked fine on initial inspection (holding them up to the window), but it quickly became apparent that all was not well when I began to scan them. A very noticeable purple cast was visible on the images, particularly where there were underexposed shadows.
Thankfully, despite the problems with the colour, modern technology is able to come to the rescue, and with some careful editing in Adobe Lightroom (mostly using he colour curves adjustments), I was able to remove the bulk of the purple caste and get relatively pleasing results. The image comparison slider below shows a good example of the before and after states of one of the images.
Some images fared worse than others, but none were a complete write off due to the colour issues – the ones I didn’t upload to Flickr were as a result of other, more mundane problems, such as soft focus or them just being photos I thought were uninteresting.
A selection of other shots from the roll are below, all after post-processing to remove the colour cast.
Overall then, while there was a definite issue present for this roll, it wasn’t insurmountable, and post-processing produced very acceptable results. I wouldn’t want to risk shooting film like this for something important, but for the fun of it, sure, and I still have plenty of expired rolls left (including some more Elite Chrome in both 100asa and 200asa variants). Further Expiryments to come…
Overall outcome: Partial success!
Olympus OM-10 & G.Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 on Kodak Elite Chrome 200 (expired 2004) . Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
Taken on 5 October 2024
Other posts in the Expiriment series:
Expiryment #1: Ilford HP5 (expired 1982)
Expiryment #2: Kodacolor VR400 (expired 1989)
Expiryment #3: Truprint FG+ (expired 2003)
Steel City Snapper photography 
I’ve found that most of the expired slide film I’ve shot is fine, though I do tend to only buy cold-stored stock. The big disappointment was with some Fuji Sensia 400, and I’m guessing it was because of it being “consumer level”. I used it on a bike tour a few years back, and while I managed to salvage many of the shots, the experience taught me to never do this for something important.
I haven’t shot slide film in over a year, and really want to again. I have five rolls in the freezer. I just need to find the right time (winter here is hard for ISO 100 film, though we’ve had more sunny days than not) and right subject matter. I’d rather use negative film stock for my day to day usage.
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I don’t tend to shoot much slide film either, mostly due to to the price(!), but there’s a real pleasure to be had when you see the results if they’ve turned out nicely.
I agree that negative film is a much safer prospect, although I guess if I shot more E6 it would force me to be more considered with the exposure settings knowing the film’s latitude won’t be my saviour if I get it wrong.
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Look forward to more expirymentation … expired film adds spice and jeopardy to the whole process IMHO
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There’s a definite sense of jeopardy involved, but when they turn out nicely it’s a real kick.
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