Film Logbook

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Organizing your film fridge

A practical way to keep track of the film you actually own — so you stop double-buying Portra, stop panic-shooting stocks that were fine, and actually use the stuff you bought to try.

Updated 2026-04-21 · 7 min read

Film photographers accumulate film the way fishermen accumulate lures: you buy some, you try some, you buy more because it was on sale, you forget what you had, and six months later you're panic-shooting three rolls of something that was fine in the fridge all along.

The Film Fridge in Film Logbook 2.0 is a light inventory system — not accounting software, not a collection manager. Here's how to set it up so it actually stays useful.

What a film fridge is, for the uninitiated

Cold storage (refrigerator) slows colour-negative film's latent decay from years to decades. Freezer storage slows it further, to the point of being effectively indefinite for a human lifetime. Black and white film is more forgiving at room temperature than colour, but fridge storage doesn't hurt it.

The "film fridge" is the fridge (or section of a fridge) where you keep film. Most analog photographers have one by the time they own more than ten rolls. The Film Fridge tab in the app is where you track what's in it.

Step one: get what you have into the app

Don't aim for total accuracy on day one. Walk to the fridge, open the app, and add rolls in groups:

  • Stock name — pick from the community database when the stock is there; type it in when it isn't.
  • Format — 135, 120, sheet.
  • Quantity — not how many rolls, but how many rolls of this specific entry. Twelve rolls of Portra 400 that all expire the same year, bought as a brick, are one entry with quantity 12.
  • Expiration date — off the side of the box.
  • Where you bought it and when — optional but useful.

Do not log individual roll serial numbers. You'll hate yourself in a week. The point is to know what kinds of film you have, roughly how much, and when it expires.

Naming conventions that won't decay

The community database covers most stocks. When it doesn't:

  • Use the manufacturer's full product name. "Kodak Ektar 100" not "Ektar." You'll thank yourself when the database catches up.
  • Put the format in a separate field, not in the name. "Kodak Portra 400" in name, "120" in format field.
  • For expired stock being sold cheap, add "(expired YYYY-MM)" in the notes, not the title.

Expiration dates — when to panic, when not to

A fridge-stored roll's printed expiration is best-before, not best-by-or-don't-shoot. Rule of thumb:

  • Within 2 years of expiration — shoot normally. No adjustment.
  • 2–5 years past expiration, cold-stored — shoot at box speed or one stop over (ISO 400 rated at 200) for safety. Note the adjustment in the roll.
  • 5–10 years past, cold-stored — rate it half box speed (400 at 200 or 100). You'll get a slight colour shift that some photographers love.
  • 10+ years, warm-stored — experimental. Fun. Not reliable.

The Film Fridge sorts by expiration by default, so the rolls closest to expiry surface at the top. Shoot from the top.

Fridge vs. freezer

Rule of thumb:

  • Film you'll shoot within a year — fridge.
  • Film you're saving (bricks of discontinued stocks, sentimental rolls, frozen-in-time 2009 Portra) — freezer.
  • Film that's opened/loaded into a camera — neither; shoot it within weeks.

Freezer-stored film needs to come up to temperature before loading. Twelve hours in the fridge, then thirty minutes on the counter, before opening the foil. Cold film + warm humid air = condensation on the emulsion.

Log the storage location in the roll's notes — "freezer" or "fridge" — if you alternate. Makes it obvious later why a roll behaved a certain way.

Connecting the fridge to shooting

The real payoff is loading a roll. In 2.0, starting a new roll from the shooting screen lets you pick from what you have in the fridge. Pick it, and:

  • The Film Fridge count for that entry decrements automatically.
  • The shooting-stage roll inherits the film stock and ISO.
  • The expiration date flows to the roll (useful if you're adjusting exposure for an old roll).

This is the small loop that makes the inventory stay accurate. You don't have to manually decrement — you just load a roll the way you always would, and the app follows.

The failure mode to avoid

Don't make the fridge feature into a catalogue. The goal isn't to track every roll's provenance. The goal is: when I'm deciding what to shoot next weekend, I can open the app and see what I actually have. A loose accurate inventory is worth ten times a precise one you stopped maintaining.