Shooting expired film – Ricoh 500G and Kodak Max 400 test roll

In my quest to find cheap 35mm films to test my Ricoh 500G compact rangefinder, I came across a listing online of a film Nikon SLR. Now a “new” camera is the last thing I should be looking for but in the background of the photo were 2 boxes of expired Kodak Max 400. To cut the story short, I was able to purchase only the films for a really good price – almost 1/5 of the cost of what an expired film is being sold today.

Shooting expired film is somewhat of a risk as you’ll never know how your photos will end up looking like. A lot of factors also needs to be considered but the most important thing is how the film was stored. In theory, a cold-stored film (freezing is even better) should give you better results as lower temperatures will slow down film degradation. Well, cold storing a more than a decade-old film from a hobbyist is rare if not impossible, so the theory didn’t affect my decision much. I’ve had pretty good results with expired films in the past anyway, so I did not hesitate to use the Kodak Max 400 as a test roll on my Ricoh 500G.

Here are some photos taken with the Ricoh 500G and expired Kodak Max 400:

To be fair, I was pleasantly satisfied with how the photos turned out. It’s by no means near the quality of a fresh film roll, like the one I used on my Minolta Zoom 110 point-and-shoot, but it did the job for me, especially as a test roll. I lot might have strong opinions about using expired film but if you’re not always looking for consistency or just starting out in film photography and just wanted to shoot film for the experience, then I would definitely recommend trying at least 1 roll of expired film. Although there are already other affordable film stocks available like the awesome Kentmere Pan 400, but those only come in Black and White.

As expected, the colors and tones tend to be unexpected and noise is very prominant, but overall I’m very happy with my purchase. I’ll surely stock up again on expired film when I find something cheap. As always, thank you for reading my blog and hope you liked it. Don’t forget to follow me on my Instagram for more photos. Paalam muna!