Recently I’ve had developed some expired film ‘given’ to me by a neighbor.  Here’s the backstory, they were moving and knew that I had an interest in film cameras.  I was given two cameras that contained partially exposed rolls of film:  A Canon Sure Shot point and shoot and a Fujica ST-705.

I told them that I would finish exposing the rolls and have them developed.  To preserve their privacy I will only share the images that I exposed to complete the rolls.  It was also at least 30 year old film not stored under the best conditions. Kudos to Old School Photo Lab for pulling these images out of very dense negatives through scanning.  The images were almost impossible to discern even using the brightest light table.

Interesting results.  First the Canon Sure Shot:  All of the Kodak GC 400 film shifted blue, but many images were salvageable when converted to B&W.  I bumped up the contrast 100-200%:

Below a comparison of the original to the B&W:

Next the Fujica ST-705.  Really a neat camera; lightweight and easy to figure out.  This contained some version of Kodacolor film which somewhat maintained it’s color but became very grainy and dark:

So where Am I going with Expired film?  It never really interested me before.  I was always in pursuit of the sharp, crisp image.  But lately I’ve drifted into pinholes and a renewed interest in plastic cameras,  which offer very different photographic characteristics.  Also recently a friend gave us a treasure trove of expired films:

I gave some away to my Emulsive Secret Santa last year, who expressed an interest in expired films.  But I kept the more interesting ones….I was also given a Minox “Spy” Camera with an expired roll that I am shooting now:

In another twist I was reorganizing my 35 mm camera storage and found my Minolta SRT-202 with half a roll of unexposed T-MAX.  When did I last use  THAT camera? 4-5 years ago?  Certainly expired now.  So I have Expired films to play with…….more coming on the horizon.