Shooting a 2-decade-old expired film | Konica Centuria 200

So what does it look like to shoot an expired 35mm film, let alone a 2-decade-old one? Shooting expired film always comes with a risk, you’ll never know what results you are going to get or if you are getting any at all. But the upside is, or at least it should be, it’s way cheaper than fresh film. And if you’re like me who loves surprises, I think you should try to find and shoot an expired film at least once in your film photography journey. I’ve shot a few rolls of expired films in the past with good results, so I was hopeful with this one too.

The expired film on hand today is the Konica Minolta Centuria Super 200, a film that I haven’t used or heard of before. I saw them selling for Php 800 for a box of 4 which is at Php 200/roll of 36 frames ($4/roll) in a local marketplace. I don’t know the history of how it was stored but it was a cheap risk that I’m willing to take, plus, the packaging looks amazing! If you didn’t know, storing film in a cold environment can prolong its life way past its expiration date. Also as a rule of thumb, you should overexpose them at +1 stop for every decade it has been expired once you shoot them. This batch expired in 2005/2006 so I should be shooting them at iso 50.

As you can see, the photos did come out! And they did come out good in my opinion considering how old the film was. The first thing I noticed is that the Konica Minolta Centuria 200 film has a cooler tone compared to the warmer tone of the Kodak Max 400 expired film I shot before. The photos also came out more washed out but it’s fine with me. As expected, the quality of each photo is not consistent, some came out better than others. This is something you should be aware of when shooting expired film and it’s why I don’t recommend them for more serious works. For me, I’m just glad I still have 3 rolls left! 😉

Before I forget, I used a Nikon F100 film camera and a Nikkor 50mm f1.8D lens for this set. I figured if I wanted to increase my odds of getting some results, I might as well use one of my better film cameras. Set the ISO to 50 (+2 stop overexposed) and rely on Nikons’ matrix-metering. If you must know, I did miscalculate at first and set the ISO at 100 (+1 stop overexposed) which might (or might not) have caused some photos to be “muddier”, but hey, I still got all 36 frames!

At the end of the day, what mattered was that I was able to get out and shoot, had some conversations while at it, and made my soul happy. Once again. thank you for reading my blog. Don’t forget to follow me on my Instagram @kingderamos. for more photos. Also, if you like what you see, subscribe here so you’ll be notified whenever I post new blogs. Salamat!