Holga Blog

For some time I wanted to experience and talk about it. And there’s no better time than the Polaroid week!.

I already know some of the characteristics of highly expired film (gelatin silver BW film), but I felt very curious to know what can happen within those packs of Polaroid peel a part. For this article I used film type 107 ( ISO 3000  BW) and type 108  (ISO 75 color). Beautiful, very well preserved … and with an expiration date of July 1974 and September 1978!

The first surprise I got was the great state of conservation of the inner bag, instructions and bottle of fixer from the film 107. It was as if time had not passed there!

I decided to start using the 107 type pack. Before beginning I thought that the processing time should be longer, because the chemicals would have lost some of their properties. The instructions indicate a time of 15sec. 70 Fahrenheit degrees . I rose this time upto 1 min.

Then I met up with reality. Most of the shots could not be used. All the chemistry was dead. The jelly was dry and hard. There was nothing in the shooting. A white picture and the two strips of paper blowing in the wind. But I discovered that in the middle of the pack this jelly was in better condition and … Voilà!. It Worked!

I love the results. They are halfway between painting and photography alternative techniques. The jelly conservation state makes it expand in a random way.  Lovely but impossible to control. The black strip you see in some shots on the left is a small technical fault. Make sure that the paper comes out whole when you load the camera. If you do not, it will cover part of the picture underexposing a small area…

The second test was overexposing the film. My Polaroid Instant 30 has two positions. ISO 75 and ISO 3000. These results are overexposing the film like ISO 75.

Mid-tones disappear and you can see high contrast effect between light and shadow. Years have passed but the film still retains some qualities.

Unfortunately when I started the type 108  pack test, the poor state of preservation of the film during this time made the whole pack was disabled. My tests on type 108 film will have to wait for another time …

This is an sample of  a completely dry piece of film. Also a shot where the chemistry has not taken effect.

Conclusions:
The highly expired film is like a lottery. The chances of success are very low, but the results can be very interesting.
The conservation conditions affect much more packs of Polaroid than another type of sensitive material. When you purchase a pack that is more than 30 years expired, it´s impossible to know what its current status is.
The  price is usually high, because many people buy them to decorate their collections of cameras, not to use them.
The magic of chemistry makes every shot in a  ” unique ” photo with a beautiful format.

I love the film and I will continue testing over and over again since I can keep getting these “little boxes of surprises”.