Expired 35mm film
Expired 35mm film is where most expired stock turns up, simply because 35mm has been made in far greater volume than any other format for decades, so there is more of it sitting in drawers, shop stockrooms and house clearances. It is also the cheapest format to shoot while you work out how a particular batch behaves. Compare expired 35mm film prices from UK retailers on Filmproof.
![[ Short Expired ] Fujifilm Colour C200 35mm Film, (Set of 3)](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0014/2314/7055/files/short-expired-fujifilm-colour-c200-35mm-film-24-exposures-set-of-3.jpg?v=1689247618)
About Expired 35mm film
What to expect from expired 35mm
Expired 35mm covers everything from rolls a year or two past date, which usually shoot much like fresh film, to stock from the 1990s that has lost several stops of speed and shifted colour heavily. The everyday consumer stocks that sold in the largest numbers, Kodak Gold, UltraMax and the old Fujicolor lines, are the ones that surface most often, alongside discontinued emulsions that can only be bought expired now.
As a starting point, meter around one stop over box speed for each decade past the date, so a ten-year-expired ISO 400 roll is shot at about ISO 200. Because 35mm gives you 24 or 36 frames, it is worth bracketing across the first roll of a batch rather than committing a whole shoot to a guess.
Buying expired 35mm film
Expired 35mm generally sells below fresh stock, though genuinely scarce discontinued emulsions can go the other way and command more than they ever did new. Ask how a roll was stored where you can, since cold-stored film from the 2000s often outperforms warm-stored film from the 2010s.
Filmproof tracks expired 35mm separately from fresh 35mm across UK shops, so a cheap expired roll is never presented as the best price for a fresh one. Live prices per roll are updated daily.