I just got a chance to find out just how elastic expiry dates are. I bought a package of old photographic stuff at a flea market, and included in it was a box of Kodachrome 64, with an expiry date of October 1987 (1987, that is not a typo). Ordinarily, I would just have thrown it out, but it came with pre-paid processing from Kodak Canada. I called them up, asking if this was still honored, and they said no problem. The woman I spoke to was quite knowledgeable, and she told me that the film would probably still come out, but the colors would be off.
I loaded the roll in my camera, and finished it all on local sights over my lunch hour. When I got it back, I was amazed. In fact, the colors were not bad at all, with the reds just slightly toward magenta. The main defect was a lower degree of contrast than I would expect from Kodachrome, almost as if the film was slightly fogged (from gamma rays penetrating the film over the years?) However, all in all, the results were quite acceptable, and this from film that was probably stored under all kinds of temperature extremes.
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