I’ve got a dwindling cache of Polaroid 669 pack film sitting where it’s sat for the past 11 years: in the bottom drawer of our refrigerator. I bought a case of two-packs off eBay in 2008, the year it was scheduled to expire. And it was the year Polaroid Corp. shuttered its entire film production enterprise. Every few months I’ll dust off one the Type 100 Land cameras I have and load a pack of film and, you know, see what happens. I’m not gonna lie: it’s often a futile endeavor. The film expired in 2008. But with a bit of trial and error, it can still render a decent image. But what the cost is per exposure ends up being, I don’t even want to know.

The picture of Rafa was shot on that lot of 669 film (the Land 450 camera used to make the picture is over 40 years old). And though the photo was shot in bright sun, I still had to crank the exposure control way over to the “lighten” side of the scale. So along with muted colors, a streaky magenta cast that shows up on every image–regardless of film pack, camera, and temperature–it appears there’s been some sort of ISO shift, too.

But trying as it can be, shooting pictures with expired Type 100 film is still pretty cool. I don’t want to call it elegant. In truth, it’s messy. For every image, there’s a paper negative and residual chemistry. Add a bulky Polaroid 600SE camera  to mix, and things become more of a chore: manuel exposure (not a bad thing with old film), swappable backs (cool) and a weight of six pounds (uncool). But there is a beauty to all that fuss. Pulling that film tab and drawing the film through the roller set, then peeling the positive from the negative to reveal the final image has never gotten old. Never.

What’s gonna happen when I shoot the last of that 669 film, or more likely, when it finally fails? I dunno.

There is a “new” single-shot Type 100-style film that’s been developed by none other than Florian “Doc”  Kaps, the gent who launched the Impossible Project and saved Polaroid Integral film from disappearing about 10 years ago. The name of his new enterprise: One Instant. From what I’ve seen, the system looks a bit cumbersome (said the guy whose had 11-year-old film in his fridge for over a decade) and spendy, too. But once it hits the marketplace, I’ll probably buy some of Kaps’ film, if only to pull that film across those rollers and peel it apart to reveal a picture one more time.