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Shooting expired Super8 film


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Found Agfa Moviechrome 40 Super8 film expired in 1987. It's been in room temperature but it's sealed so can it still be used? Things I should do if I decide to shoot that film? What results should I expect?

By the way, why there is no expire dates in new Kodak Super8 films?

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It's impossible to tell because storage temperature will be a factor and you don't know how warm it's been kept over the last 30+ years. Room temp is a wide range. Slow stocks do age better, but 30 years is a long time. 

It's probably very fogged, but it might work for an interesting look if you overexpose by at least a stop.

Normally in this situation you'd send it to the lab for a clip test. They would cut off a short section and process it to see if is usable. Unfortunately that's not doable on Super 8, you have to process the whole roll at once. If you have multiple rolls shoot one as a test and get it processed first.

If you only have 1 roll it may or may not work - so a gamble. Don't shoot anything important on it.

I was given a bunch of "room temperature" stored stock by a friend, about 30 rolls mixed 35mm and 16mm. So a nice find - I got clip tests done and it turned out to be completely unusable. Lucky I didn't try to shoot anything on it. Turns out "room temperature" was my friends shed, which becomes an oven in the summer - completely destroyed the stock. It was a disappointment. 

 

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On 11/30/2019 at 12:29 PM, Phil Connolly said:

I was given a bunch of "room temperature" stored stock by a friend, about 30 rolls mixed 35mm and 16mm. So a nice find - I got clip tests done and it turned out to be completely unusable. Lucky I didn't try to shoot anything on it. Turns out "room temperature" was my friends shed, which becomes an oven in the summer - completely destroyed the stock. It was a disappointment. 

 

I once found some cheap unopened 16mm soviet b/w rolls on eBay and purchased couple just to see what it was and if it could be used for art projects. 

It turned out that in all the rolls the film was fused together as one solid block with the plastic core in the center. Basically they were just solid plastic disks made out of 16mm film. No way to get anything out of them, not even an inch of film could be ripped off. 

They were clearly stored in hot conditions and the emulsion had just melted and fused the film layers together like hot glue. 

The cardboard boxes were quite nice looking but that was about it. I don't know if I even have the boxes anymore. Did not get my money back because the seller did not claim the film was in usable condition, he was only selling nice looking vintage film (boxes) which were unopened so that there was "something" inside.

The lesson was that never pay anything for film stock which has unknown history. OR at least not more than the empty film cans are worth...

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