Just How Far Can You Push Expired Slide Film?

The best colour image from the roll. I talk more about it below. 1s 80mm F11 + 2 stops Ektachrome 64 - colour corrected (expired 1980).

Just how far can you push it with expired film? Most of my experimentation has come with negative film, with some rolls expiring before I was born. Despite the difficulties with their age, overexposing it by an extra stop for every decade expired has always worked well and given me an image, even if there are significant colour shifts. However, with slide film I’ve only shot a single roll that was roughly a decade past its expiry date. There’s a lot of conflicting information online as to what to do with slide film and shooting that one one stop overexposed meant it really did come out a bit overexposed.

But shooting a roll of Ektachrome 64 that expired in 1980? That’s a different story, especially as this one has been improperly stored outside of refrigeration for most of its life. Surely this will have lost a large proportion of its light sensitivity and require a level of overexposure? Without really knowing I decided to do a test. I had four lenses for my Bronica SQ-A (50mm, 80mm, 110mm and 150mm) so I would shoot four images, one with each lens, at three different exposures. One at box speed, one at two stops over exposed and one at four stops overexposed. Whilst I may not get the exposure exactly right it would give me a rough idea of how to handle such unpredictable film.

The initial image that greets you out the box show very little obvious detail and colours beyond recognition. 1/4s 80mm F11 Ektachrome 64 (expired 1980).

Converting to black and white shows off the detail hidden underneath but at box speed this image is evidently underexposed. 1/4s 80mm F11 Ektachrome 64 - monochrome conversion (expired 1980).

It was possible to recover a small amount of colour but the image is quickly consumed by the high amounts of grain. 1/4s 80mm F11 Ektachrome 64 - colour corrected (expired 1980).

The results were certainly interesting. I’ve not shared every image from the roll as it’s pretty self-explanatory once you’ve looked at just a few images. None of them came out anywhere near normal, the colours had shifted to be almost completely blue no matter what exposure I had taken. It was a bit of a headscratcher at first but scanning the images in I had a go at trying to rescue them.

With more exposure we can already see more detail now even if it is hidden behind the heavy blue colour shift. 1s 80mm F11 + 2 stops Ektachrome 64 (expired 1980).

Converting to black and white actually gives a fairly useable image. You can clearly read the text on sign at the bottom of the image. 1s 80mm F11 + 2 stops Ektachrome 64 - monochrome conversion (expired 1980).

This exposure gave the best and most accurate colours of the three exposures. Still far from accurate but has a cool retro feel to it. 1s 80mm F11 + 2 stops Ektachrome 64 - colour corrected (expired 1980).

First of I tried converting the image to black and white to see how much detail I captured. This worked surprisingly well and with a bit of tweaking of the levels I had a somewhat usable image. Shooting at box speed gave a very grainy images that was clearly underexposed but the images shot at two and four stops overexposed had much better detail. The image with four stops having the most. Though age had still taken its toll and I would say the grain is on par with an ISO 400 film like Ilford HP5+ and not anything near ISO 64.

With even more exposure we can now see a lot more when compared to the previous two. It almost looks like some sort of strange negative. 4s 80mm F11 + 4 stops Ektachrome 64 (expired 1980).

Furthermore this exposure had the most detail and least amount of grain. I would say it is comparable to Ilford HP5+. 4s 80mm F11 + 4 stops Ektachrome 64 - monochrome conversion (expired 1980)

The high level of exposure has caused more colour shifts and whilst the detail is there the colours are washing out to teal. 4s 80mm F11 + 4 stops Ektachrome 64 - colour corrected (expired 1980).

Next, I tried to colour correct back to more natural colours. Again, the first image being underexposed wasn’t salvageable, but the overexposed shots proved more fruitful. However, this time it was the image taken two stops overexposed that came out better in colour. It’s still not close to real life but the brightest warm tones do shine through and there is some separation between blue and green. In comparison the four stops overexposed shot has experienced another colour shift from overexposure and come out more teal with the warm tones a bit more muted.

The film did not work well for the contrasty low light conditions of this sunset. Almost nothing is visible on the initial image. 1/15s 50mm F8.0 Ektachrome 64 (expired 1980).

Converting to black and white confirms there is almost no detail here due to underexposure. 1/15s 50mm F8.0 Ektachrome 64 - monochrome conversion (expired 1980).

I don’t think we can say anything about these colours is even remotely close to accurate. 1/15s 50mm F8.0 Ektachrome 64 - colour corrected (expired 1980).

Lastly, I wanted to show the last shot of the roll which is a sunset at four times overexposed. This one came out the best of that set of three. However, as you can see it didn’t come out very well in either colour or black and white. Comparing the two it seems shooting this film in even light with warmer colours would give the best results, but they will never be anything else other than experimental. Also, perhaps the best result depends on whether you want to colour correct or convert to black and white. For the former less light is required, but for the latter you really need to crank up the exposure to get more detail in monochrome.

Now four stops overexposed we can see edge to edge detail even if it is faint. 1s 50mm F8.0 Ektachrome 64 (expired 1980).

Converting to black and white further proves this. It wouldn’t say it is useable but at least you can see what I was photographing. 1s 50mm F8.0 Ektachrome 64 - monochrome conversion (expired 1980).

However the colours are still terrible and in this instance they weren’t any better on the shot that was only two stops overexposed. It doesn’t help that the image is mostly green which struggles to separate out from the blue colour cast. 1s 50mm F8.0 Ektachrome 64 - colour corrected (expired 1980).

I’ll be honest I wouldn’t want to do something like this again, clearly this film has gone beyond any real usefulness unless you really want to push the boat out there with experimentation. The fact that this film wasn’t cold stored for its life would have been a big part of the issue and I won’t be picking up any slide film older than two decades expired that hasn’t been on ice. What do you think? Have you tried to shoot heavily expired slide film as well? Let me know your thoughts and comments down below.

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