Date Codes

The most common edge coding information that folks are familiar with are date codes. Most extensively employed by Eastman Kodak, some Dupont and Fuji stocks have date codes as well. These codes refer to the year of manufacture of the stock itself, which is massively helpful information to know, but also worth keeping in mind that it doesn’t mean that’s the same year the film was shot or processed. But if you’re lucky, for some eras of Kodak processing, they would expose little processing tags in the perforation area as well, e.g. “Feb 68” or “May 62” – these will indeed let you know when something was processed, but unfortunately they tend to turn up in a minority of examples.

A handy date code document, originally assembled by various archivists, cleaned up, re-organized, and updated by John Klacsmann, is HERE.