Shooting Expired Fujifilm FP-100C: Sample Shots & Tips
Film: Fujifilm FP-100C peel-apart instant film, cold stored
Camera: BigShot and Polaroid 403
Location: [Malibu, CA
How expired FP-100C holds up
Fujifilm stopped making FP-100C in 2018, so every pack out there now is expired. How it shoots comes down mostly to storage. Mine has been cold stored since I bought it, and my 2014-08 batch still gives me amazing colors on the magenta side, with near-perfect tones and borders. Packs that sat warm tend to show bigger color shifts, and the developer in badly stored packs can dry out.
How I shoot it
- Let it warm up. Bring a cold-stored pack to room temperature before you load it: about an hour out of the fridge, longer out of the freezer. That keeps condensation off the film.
- Give it a little extra light. Expired film usually likes slight overexposure. On automatic Land Cameras, nudge the lighten/darken dial toward lighten if your prints come out dark.
- Time the development. Around 90 seconds at room temperature is the usual starting point. Go longer when it's cold, shorter when it's hot, and give expired packs a few extra seconds.
- Pull straight and steady. Pull the tab out in one smooth motion so the developer spreads evenly across the frame.
Cameras that take FP-100C
FP-100C is 3.25 x 4.25 in Type 100 pack film, ISO 100 with 10 exposures per pack. It fits Polaroid pack-film cameras like the Land Camera 100–400 series and the Polaroid Big Shot, the Fujifilm FP-1, the Polaroid 600SE, and medium-format cameras with a 3.25 x 4.25 instant back.
The Big shot Requires Magicubes which are very hard to find now but you get 4 shots per bulb and sometimes they wont fire when the pink breaks and you have to roate or put a new cube in and shoot the shot again.
Shop my cold-stored FP-100C
I sell packs from my own cold-stored stock, priced per box with free UPS 2nd Day Air shipping in the US. Each listing shows the expiration date and how the film has been stored and tested.