Showerthought: a guy at the camera shop in Boise told me expired film loses about 1 stop of speed per decade, and my whole stash suddenly made sense

Hugo Jones · 2026-09-22T22:30:03.91917+00:00

I always thought expired film just meant grainy and weird colors, so I shot a roll of 20 year old Kodak Gold at box speed and got nothing but muddy shadows. The guy at the counter pulled out a little chart showing you lose roughly 1 stop per decade past the expiry date, so my 2002 stock was already 2 stops slow. I shot the next roll at 50 and the negs came out way denser with actual shadow detail. Now I'm sitting on 30 rolls of old film and trying to do the math on each one. How do you all handle this without wasting a test roll every time?

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Showerthought: a guy at the camera shop in Boise told me expired film loses about 1 stop of speed per decade, and my whole stash suddenly made sense | Analog Photo Fixing - HW Forums