What Happens When You Try to Shoot Film That’s 80 Years Old

Expired film doesn’t just shift colors or create funky tones. Once it’s old enough, it can completely fail, leaving you with nothing but blank frames. That risk is especially real with rolls from the 1940s and 50s, where the materials themselves may have already broken down beyond use. Experimenting with this kind of film can be fascinating, though.

Coming to you from Matheiu Stern, this unusual video looks at what happens when you try to shoot with film that expired nearly 80 years ago. Stern loaded rolls of Kodak Super XX and rare color stocks into a Canon F-1, carefully compensating for the age by rating them at the lowest possible ISO. The rolls were then hand-developed by Kristoff, a technician in France. Color film that old didn’t survive at all, as entire rolls came back blank. Even the black and white stock from 1946 seemed lost at first. The disappointment of seeing nothing after all the effort is something anyone shooting expired film can relate to.

The twist came when Stern decided to rescan the supposedly ruined negatives himself using a Valoy 45 millimeter setup with a macro lens. That extra effort revealed faint, ghostlike images hiding in the emulsion. They weren’t strong or clean, but they proved that the film had captured light. Alongside the images were strange dots—evidence that the gelatin base itself had started to decompose over decades. That detail alone highlights how fragile film is and why storage conditions make or break its longevity. The experiment makes clear that when film is this old, it’s more a gamble than a reliable process.

Another surprising insight in the video is that film isn’t inert. The photosensitive layer is suspended in gelatin made from animal bones, which means it’s literally organic. This has been true for more than a century, and it’s still how film is produced today by Kodak, Fujifilm, and Ilford. The gelatin is sensitive to heat, humidity, and time, which is why freezing is the only way to keep film stable for decades. That’s also why rare emulsions like Enso color film have disappeared from use, as it required special processing that can’t be done today. Stern’s results drive home how unpredictable it is to rely on rolls that are decades past expiration, but it's a very fun experiment. Check out the video above for the full rundown.