Expired film: How to spice up your photography?

By Alex Cimpeanu

Taking pictures is now a thoughtless activity. Just take your iPhone out of the pocket if it isn’t already in your hand and press the button. No need to think about aperture and focus and white balance. Not good? You can instantly delete it and snap another one. Not happy? Add a filter.

But for many people, photography is so much more than this. The ones who don’t want to give up on analogue and the ones who are just discovering it. The online community seems to be flourishing, especially after Covid, when people took to new hobbies. There is even a meme community about it- and that’s how you know something is big nowadays.

Source: 35mm Film on Facebook

Marius Constantin is 33 and owns Vintage Camera Hut, a business that restores, repairs and sells cameras and film. He’s always been into photography.

“I bought my first film camera in 2017, it was an Olympus OM10 and the first roll I shot was expired for 20 years,” he says. Few lockdowns later, he has his own business and plenty of followers on his Instagram: vintage_camera_hut.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/92a910_42a2738c7abc45deacab2ae17395d4f5/480p/mp4/file.mp4

Video courtesy of Marius Constantin

“This was just a passion for a long time,” he says.

Constantin bought and repaired cameras for 2 years until 2019.

“When you’re doing something with passion and you’re very good at it, it’s just a step for it to develop into a business without even knowing.”

He chose analogue because it’s about talking the time for each shot, the excitement before developing and because each shot has an actual value as film is quite expensive nowadays.

However, although cheaper, Constantin wouldn’t recommend expired film to absolute beginners.

“You need a bit of knowledge to shoot it. The expired stock needs to be exposed a lot more, usually 1 stop for every 10 years. Usually you can’t do that on most of the point and shoot cameras so you will need a SLR,” he says.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/92a910_922e53d1a2444720a39b2009005a0cf2/480p/mp4/file.mp4

Video courtesy of Marius Constantin

Josh, 20, from JPR films who did not want to reveal his full-name, also shoots film, including expired. He's also one of the camera and film sellers in the UK, but he's based in Nottingham.

“It's a cheap way to get used to shooting film and can produce some really unique results,” he says.

Wanna try?

Here are some of his tips for it: https://jfrfilm.co.uk/blogs/guidance/tips-for-shooting-expired-film