I was recently given an expired roll of Ilford FP4 by a very nice person here in Ottawa. To their best of their knowledge, the roll was blank and they donated it to me for my own use. I did a little homework and found that FP4 was replaced with the current FP4+ in 1990, so I assumed that this roll had to be expired in 1992 at the latest1.
While expired print film often needs more light to use it, in my experience, the guidance often offered (+1 stop for every decade) is not entirely accurate2 and the list of conditions for the “rule” to hold is lengthy and, really, many of us using expired film don’t have the information to make that determination. I chose to meter this roll at 80 ISO.
The walk home was bright and beautiful on Thursday. I had a meeting go a little late and with the sun beckoning, old film of unknown quality, and a need to force myself through the annual disappointment of false spring (it’s snowing again today), I changed from my office shoes into my sneakers and headed for home.
As always, I developed the roll after dinner, this time choosing HC-110 dilution E (1+47) and while — as expected — the film was very much fogged, it was pictures!
Two pictures!
Double exposures!
It would turn out that the whole roll was actually used at some point, probably in the 1980s or 1990s and (I am assuming) was of the annual bicycle race at Preston Street, as seen from near the northeast corner of Gladstone and Preston. For the date, this would be similar to the roll of HP5 I had developed for them a few weeks ago, which I guessed was exposed in the Spring of 1988.
While FP4 is not quite long-lasting as Panatomic-X (I don’t know if anything is), it really does seem to endure the years quite well and, if you should find an old roll, it’s worth giving it a go!
Photo Information
Camera
Lens
Film
Chemistry
Scanner
Location
Date(s)
Filing
Nikon EM
Nikon Series E 50mm f/1.8
Ilford FP4 (Exp. <1993)(EI80)
HC-110e (1+47)
Plustek 8200i / Silverfast 9
Ottawa, Ontario
March 27, 2025
Series 6, Roll 58
- It does seem to be the case that manufacturers give their fresh film a 2 or 3 year expiry. Strictly speaking, this roll could have had an expiry date of 1993. ↩︎
- In Spring 2024, I exposed a roll of Ilford FP4 that expired in 1977, metering it at 25 ISO,
which was far too much light. I would have been better off somewhere between 40 and 64. Update: No, it looks fine now that I’ve re-scanned the roll. ↩︎