My expired Portra finally clicked after 4 rolls of garbage

I shot a brick of 120 that expired in 2016 and every roll came out muddy and flat until I tried rating it at 50 instead of box speed on the last one. The shadow detail and color balance totally shifted, like the film just needed way more light to wake up after sitting in my closet for 8 years. Has anyone else had luck pushing expired stock with a lower ISO, or do you just lean into the weirdness?

2 comments

2 Comments

vera5149d agoMost Upvoted

Well damn, @lopez.quinn probably nailed it and I'm just out here guessing like I'm trying to fix a carburetor blindfolded. Honestly, I've had expired rolls that turned out amazing for no reason and others that looked like soup, so maybe I'm the common denominator in that equation.

lopez.quinn9d ago

Did you check the development time on those rolls too, or was it strictly the ISO change? I get what you're saying about giving it more light, but in my experience most expired film problems come down to how it was stored, not just how old it is. If that brick sat in a warm closet, the base fog is going to eat your shadows no matter what speed you shoot at, and dropping to 50 could just be masking the real issue. Ive shot 20 year old stuff that was kept in a fridge that looked better at box speed than some 5 year old rolls that cooked in a hot car. The muddy look you got might have been more about the emulsion degrading unevenly, which lower ISO won't fix consistently across the whole roll. Your last roll working could also be luck, honestly. That said, if the results made you happy, that's all that matters, but I wouldnt write off the weirdness as a bad thing either, sometimes the garbage look has its own charm.