I've got some colour SX-70 film which was produced in late 2017, and I wanted to know if it'll be alright? It's been kept cool for the vast majority of that time and unopened. As it's somewhat recent, will it still be alright to shoot?
Posted Mar 27, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC
Polaroid recommends you should shoot within 12 months if the production date for best results. Refrigeration is said to extend that. Maybe it will be fine, maybe you’ll have discoloration, weird artifacts, and/or incomplete chemical spread. Maybe the battery is dead. Only one way to find out!
This is very true. I've had a wealth of experience with expired film but nothing on expired Polaroid film stocks, so it's a new thing for me. I'll test it when my recently bought impulse purchase of a Polaroid 1000 Land Camera arrives. If all is well, I'll share the results here!!
If you have a voltmeter, you can test the battery of the film packs before using them.
Voltage should be around 6V. If its way below, there is the possibility to swap the unexposed frames of a film pack to a empty one. (Should be done in complete darkness, or a dark changing bag.)
The modern film packs generally have enough energy to expose an additional 8 frames.
Yeah, sometimes I buy I-type film and switch it out to a 600 cartridge. Polaroid Support has told me that a non-expired battery in a film cartridge could last “possibly dozens” of packs of film.
Out of curiosity, why change out the 600 film with the i-type? I thought it was the same film, except i-type doesn’t have a battery in the catridge.
I would be very surprised if this worked well