What went wrong with this film?

[Spotmatic]

Today I was trying out some expired Fuji Superia 400 color negative film (expiry date in 2007). I have tried old film before, but apart from slight color casts I did not expect anything else.

What went wrong with this film? Even for ISO 400 the results look more like ISO 3200, also there's more color in the lower part of the picture, the rest is washed out??? Is this a film defect or did the shop a lousy job?

[cooltouch]

It looks underexposed to me. What sort of light meter did you use? I've found that, whenever I've underexposed print film, it gets very grainy, especially in the shadows. The color streak at the base is curious, though.

I've used color print film recently that was way past a 2007 expiration date -- like 2004 -- and the prints I got back from it were still good. I even asked the lady at the lab if they had to do much in the way of color correction and she said that they didn't.

Of course, the way it's been stored these past few years will make a difference, but typically I've seen this more as a color shift problem not a sensitivity to light problem.

[Spotmatic]

I used my trusty Spotmatic with my also trusty Gossen Luna Pro meter. The meter is correct because I have tested my DSLR's in Manual mode with that meter.

The Spotmatic should be working correctly, just as it did with the previous film (100% of the shots were exposed properly on slide film). And what about the bar with much more color at the bottom?

[Katastrofo]

Film looks like it got "cooked" perhaps in a car during summer, etc. I have
some rolls of KG100 that I bought off the bay that are starting to exhibit
this same condition. A friend of mine told me high heat/humidity can do
this to film. I won't be buying expired film from a seller in Asia any more.

Thinking about having my wife send me some Lucky film from Thailand.

[ryan s]

[lulalake]

Never, ever trust expired color film.

Jules