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Got a chance to use up some of the expired film I had. This is a Black and White shot, straight from the camera, to the developer, to your eyes.

Sharp eyed readers will notice it's more of a Sepia tone than Black and White. Not sure if this is an effect of the developing, or the age of the film, but it adds a wonderful hue to the image.

Shot with my Nikon F3HP, 135mm Tamron Adaptall lens at f/2.8 and about 1/2000 of a second.

On the Flip Side

The other two rolls, however, yielded far more difficult images to work with. While the three shots previously posted were straight from the developer, these two had to be adjusted so you could see anything at all. As I mentioned before, the rolls were foreign, and expired, so who knows what they've been through before I got them in my hands. I believe the Nikon F5 saw them as ISO 400, but I do not remember exactly. The contrast for each has been increased and some other histogram levels were modified, but the colours (such as they are) were left untouched.

When I first looked through the images, I was disappointed nothing turned out, but then I had to remind myself this is what you get when dealing with film of unknown quality. If I had wanted magazine-worthy shots, I should have used the D2x.

But I did want to be different this time, hoping the age of the film would work to my advantage. The top shot reminds me of the old 60s slide images our parents showed us that had been taken with disposable cameras, while the bottom shot reminds me of the poster for the original version of "Night of the Living Dead" 

So perhaps not all has been lost after all. Fortunately, those were my only two rolls of the foreign film, so I hope to have a little more control in the future.

There is a zombie obstacle course/5k fun run coming up in a few weeks, I'm debating whether I should continue with the film path, or revert to digital for the event.

What say you my readers? Would you like to see more uneven surprises?

Halloween Experimentation

 So it's that time of year again, when the zombies come out to play. I always enjoy the effort people put into their outfits and love to photograph large gatherings. A local venue has a zombie walk every year with hundreds of zombies gathering for the thirty minute walk/run/shamble. I've photographed it many times before and this time I felt I should do something different. Expand my horizons so to speak.

So, I gathered three rolls of expired film, my mint condition Nikon F5, my rather battered and abused 80-200mm f/2.8, and went to town. Given the expiration dates were unknown, I really had little idea of what I was going to get. One roll was Kodak 100 Gold, which even in the best of times produces muted flat colours, and the other two rolls had no english on them whatsoever. As near as I could tell, they were from India, or possibly Pakistan. The three shots to the left are from the Kodak roll. Note that even though this was rated as ISO 100, you can see the emulsion starting to break down, and the grain become visible and rendering the already shallow DoF (all shot at 2.8 to isolate the subject from the rather cluttered background) become even

more indistinct. Of all the images I have taken throughout the years, from Colorado, to Canada, Belize and beyond, the first shot is my absolute favourite to date. The grain hit just right to add to her makeup, the colours uneven and wrong, in short, everything typical about shooting with expired film and it all came together perfectly for that one shot. 

Ancient Film

I scored a major find last month, of about 100 rolls of expired film in both 35mm and 120 format. Ever since I shot my Savannah Monitor some years ago with expired film, I've been in love the unpredictable nature of it. So you can only imagine how happy I was to get my paws on this much.

Took a roll of ISO 200 film out in my Nikon F3HP to a local marina and shot away. Check out the grain on this image. More like ISO 3200. That's what I love about expired film, you never quite know what you are going to get from it.

Portal

There are all kinds of hidden treasures in the city, you just have to find them. This for example, isn't one of them, but it's interesting all the same. It's the leftovers from a hydroelectric plant on the riverside.

I'm most impressed with the graffiti on the inner left side. Not quite sure how they got in there to do that, or why, but it adds a nice touch I think.

This is a film shot, with expired Kodak Gold film. Shot with my F4s

Yes, it's photoshopped

It's still film, but it came from the developers with a slight blue tint to it, so I upped the saturation level and went with it.

Nikon f3hp, expired film and a sunny day.

More Medium Format

This is one of the pictures I was waiting for from the many rolls I took. The film had expired in the 80s, yet there was little (if any) effects from age. It must have been stored properly. Kind of unfortunate as I was looking forward to unpredictable effects, but at the same time I'm glad it worked well for some of the shots.

Like this Audi for example. Lightly massaged in PhotoShop.