Looking at a photo born from expired film can be like driving through a rusty, puke-tinted, dust storm.  Or perhaps the film is very expired in which case it’s like trying to identify vegetables in a Borsch soup.  It’s true- some of us like the vomit haze effect of expired film.  An effect which really sticks it to the 4K, HDR 2019 we’re living in.  But others of us had little choice- we  found an old roll we forgot to develop/expose, neglected and cast out to the dark purgatory of the shelf where we keep our cameras.  Or even most unforgiving- we knowingly bought a roll of expired film cause of an irresistible 50% off and now here we are, slumped over our laptop trying to identify a carrot from a freakin’ leg!  What is one to do?  

You could attempt to make something distinguishable out of your expired soup through photoshop.  This can be pretty effective, but only to a point and can be very time consuming.  Another option is finding a lab, such as ours, that will spend time correcting the murky exposures with a proper High powered scanner(we use a Nortisu).  For color film that is obviously expired post scan we always like to ask the customer if they would like us to attempt to correct it, or of course you can let us know ahead of time if you are aware the film is expired and we will unleash the full force of the Noritsu scanner on it.  The expired scans below are next to their corrected counterparts.  They are from a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 that expired in 2011 and was shot in 2019.   The don’t look heavily expired, but enough so to give the film an underexposed quality.