Alas, all we find is an old roll of film.

But if we’re lucky, that roll of film is Panatomic X, because unlike old, expired color film, Panatomic X is often usable (and able to make excellent photos) even fifty years after its date of expiry!

Kodak Panatomic X was first created in 1933 as an ASA (ISO) 25 sheet film for making photos in which a high level of detail was required (aerial photography, professional editorial, scientific applications, etc.). It was designed to be a fine-grained, extremely sharp panchromatic black-and-white film for making extremely large prints.

Later, its sensitivity would be increased slightly to ASA 32. Even at this higher sensitivity, Panatomic X remained the slowest of the Kodak X series of black-and-white films, slower than the faster Plus X, Super XX, and Tri X.

The film was discontinued at some point in the 1940s, only for Kodak to bring it back in the late 1950s. After that, Panatomic X would remain in production for decades, until in the late 1980s or early ’90s, it was definitively discontinued.

Making the Photos

It was in just such a dusty camera bag that I found one old roll of Kodak Panatomic X. The box was stamped with an expiration date of 1970, which placed my roll’s age somewhere around 55 years. I held the film for a moment and wondered.

In late 2019, I’d stumbled upon a similarly aged roll of Kodak Plus X Pan in much the same way. That roll of film was forty-or-so years old, and yet it had made pretty good pictures. My experience with that roll of film even resulted in a well-loved article, an article as interested in film photography as it was in pets, kids, life, and living it.

Would this slower, older film make decent pictures, too?

The camera bag in which I’d found my new old roll of film contained a number of other things. Notably, a Canon EOS Elan II, one of the best, most advanced 35mm film cameras that Canon ever developed. Which is not what I would have expected.

How, I wondered, did this roll of film end up with a Canon EOS camera made sometime between 1995 and 2000? Even then, this roll of film was almost 30 years old.

Weird. But then, the whole world is weird.

It can be easy to fall into the trap of perceiving that old things are precious. I might have looked at this fifty-year-old roll of film and said, “No. Not today. Today is not special. I must await a special moment.”

Perhaps that’s how this roll of film survived to the 2020s. Who knows.

But things are meant to be enjoyed, or at least experienced, and on the very day that I unpacked my new old Canon EOS Elan II and discovered the barnacle of film clinging to its underside, I knew its days as an unexposed emulsion were over. Later that morning, my kids and wife and I went for a walk. The Canon went with me, loaded with a fifty-year-old roll of film.

The waterfront at Plymouth, Massachusetts is a funny place. Superficial wisdom would have us think that it’s where the United States was born, where the Mayflower sidled up to the coast, and where The Pilgrims first set foot on American land in 1620.

Plymouth Rock, the rock upon which the Pilgrims placed their wiggly toes upon first disembarkation, is cradled within a majestic granite monument, which probably cost millions of dollars to make. There’s a towering statue of a Native American (which, I add without comment, was erected by a white’s only, men only club known as the Improved Order of Red Men), and an exact replica of the Mayflower which can be toured for $18 a person.

There’s a Hawaiian-themed smoothie bar. There’s a guy who endlessly plays a flute, but the only song he knows is Under the Sea from Disney’s The Little Mermaid. There’s a cupcake shop sitting within the perpetual stinking miasma of the active commercial fish pier. On the day that I most recently visited, there was a sword-fighting instructor conducting classes upon one of the many small park spaces. He had a two-handed broadsword and what appeared to be hockey pads, and he was being repeatedly and noncommittally slashed by his apprentices, one of which was wearing a Naruto t-shirt and cargo shorts.

See? Funny place.

I’m just here to take pictures.

Kodak Panatomic X is slow. At ISO 32, it’s going to need a lot of light, and since my roll of film is fifty years old with an expiration date of—

Uh oh! Hold on. Am I about to mention the expired film rule? The decades? The exposure compensation? Am I, really?

Yes. I am. But only to once again lambast it as being nearly as absurd as brandishing a broadsword in a public park on a sunny Sunday morning. The “over-expose by one stop for every decade past expiration” rule needs to die.

Think about it. I need to set my exposure compensation on an ASA 32 roll of film to plus 5. That’s what the rule says. Plus 5? Do the people who spout this nonsense know what an image made at +5 looks like? Because I’ve included one in this review. And here it is.

For results like this, remember to definitely adjust your exposure +1 for every decade that your expired film has aged.

The truth about shooting expired film is this. It’s very simple. To shoot expired film, any expired film, over-expose the film by one stop. Just one. A single stop, regardless of when the film expired. Set the exposure compensation dial to +1, or do it manually. After that, just meter normally, shoot normally, develop normally, and expect the worst.

I mounted a 28mm Canon EF lens to the EOS Elan II. It’s a fast prime lens with a wide focal length that I enjoy shooting. It’s modern, with excellent optical coatings, all-encompassing depth of field, and a fast aperture for use in low light. Great lens, great camera, old film – a nice combination.

I spent the day walking about with my kids and wife. We went into some shops. Touched some plants. Ate and drank some sensible yet delicious refreshments. I even found a Nikon film camera for sale in an antique shop for just $25.

Wow. What a day. The only thing that could ruin it is if I botched developing the film.

Developing the Film

Much as I’m repulsed by the expired film over-exposure rule, so too do I reject over-thinking film development.

I don’t imply that those careful, meticulous photographers who can recognize the difference between a negative developed at 78 degrees versus one developed at 74 degrees are wrong to be so meticulous and careful. I’m only admitting that I’m not among them.

My development process with this film was identical to my development process with any film (black and white). I look at Kodak’s data sheet (archived here by the ever-generous Mike Eckman), I look at Massive Dev Chart’s site, I take their recommendations for time (if available – if not, as was the case here, I default to my randomly-selected and largely uneducated guess time of 9 minutes), add about a minute when developing expired film, use whatever developer I find under my bathroom sink, and I develop the film.

In this case, I developed with Ilford Ilfosol 3, mixed 9:1 with water that felt as warm as the air in my bathroom. I developed for about ten minutes with agitation for the first thirty seconds of the first minute, and then further agitation for just fifteen seconds every minute afterward. I rinsed and fixed at 9:1, for five minutes.

After that, I use Lightroom to edit (read: ruin) every picture I make.

Those meticulous and careful photographers that I mentioned earlier might look at my images and fret that the highlights are blown out, or that the shadow detail is lacking. But for me, the resulting images are better than I could expect from a fifty-year-old film.

Not bad, Kodak. Not bad.

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The post Shooting a 50 Year Old Roll of Kodak Panatomic X 35mm Film appeared first on Casual Photophile.

This year, I decided to use my Mamiya 645 1000s to expose two extremely expired rolls of 120-format Kodak Kodacolor film that was generously gifted to me by a kind soul a few years ago. The roll of Kodacolor II expired in July of 1981, and the Kodacolor VR expired in July of 1986. I had no idea how these rolls had been stored, but I assumed that since they were shared by a fellow photography enthusiast, that they would at least have been kept in a temperature controlled environment.

I know there are a lot of opinions about how to properly expose expired color print film, and that not everyone agrees with the “rule” to add one stop per decade (of expiration), but that general guidance has always worked well for me.

However, since both rolls of Kodacolor were originally rated at ISO 100, using this exposure compensation method would have taken me to ISO 12, requiring me to shoot wide open with my manual focus Mamiya Sekor-C lenses. I might have had enough midday sun at the beach to handhold at these slower film speeds, had I not also insisted on shooting everything with a polarizing filter that cut an additional stop of light.

My workaround was to rate the film at ISO 25 and push it an additional stop in development. In retrospect, I should have gone with my gut and rated the film at ISO 12 while still pushing it an additional stop in post for an effective rating of ISO 6. Fortunately, I was able to salvage my slightly underexposed results by scanning the negatives in 48-bit mode and adjusting the levels in Adobe Lightroom.

I exposed both rolls under full sunlight in Nags Head, N.C., and was usually able to shoot at 1/125^th with my two faster lenses (the 45mm f/2.8 and the 80mm f/2.8). With my 105mm f/3.5, I had to shoot at 1/60^th and slower. In order to get sharp photos of beachside action, I primarily shot with the wider lenses stopped down as much as was feasible.

Kodacolor II was the first Kodak emulsion to use the C-41 process, and had only been available in 135 format for eight years by the time the roll I received expired. The shots on this older emulsion turned out rather nice, albeit with the quirks and degradations one would expect from a questionably stored four-decade-old roll of film. I actually liked the color shift toward cyan and magenta, which gave the beach scenes a dreamy, retro feel.

Even pushed, the film’s grain was pleasant and organic. The main drawback that I noticed was significantly reduced dynamic range. Highlights in particular tended to blow out when I metered for the midtones.

I was not as thrilled with the results from the Kodacolor VR, which was one of the early emulsions to utilize Kodak’s T-Grain technology. Mostly, I was disappointed with the look of the grain, which to my eye felt clinical (almost like digital noise) compared to the Kodacolor II.

The newer film also suffered contrast and color issues, but unlike the older film, the results felt more like a fault than a feature.

One fun quirk the Kodacolor VR demonstrated was burned-in ghost images from the film’s backing paper. This is a fairly common artifact found in other super-expired 120-format shots. Despite its understandable shortcomings, I was honestly impressed that the Kodacolor VR shots turned out at all.

Shooting expired film is always a gamble, especially when the film in question predates the photographer using it. That said, my experience with these two rolls of Kodacolor from the early 1980s was a winning bet. The fun, memorable scenes I was able to capture feel like snapshots from a bygone era, and rewarded my film experimentation with useful learning opportunities and enjoyable results.

Feel free to check out all the shots from my various OBX film sessions in my album on Lomography.

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The post Antique Beach – Creating Summer Memories with Expired Kodacolor Film appeared first on Casual Photophile.

Here’s everything that I learned shooting my vacation on film.

Expired Film is Terrible

Here I am, complaining about expired film. This is nothing new. I complained about it here, in a hyperbolic fever dream of pain and suffering. In another fun article I satirically skewered expired film with my rapier wit (and only one guy in the comments missed that the entire article was a self-deprecating joke). Even when expired film didn’t totally ruin every photo I made, as when I shot it for this article penned last summer, I made sure to whine and cry about shooting the stuff.

Every time I shoot expired film I think I’ve learned my lesson. Why, then, did I think it would be a good idea to bring nothing but expired film on the first vacation that my family and I would take in over two years? Oh, that’s right, because I’m very stupid.

And so it was last month that my few brain cells and I packed my carry-on bag with ten rolls of various types of expired film just prior to boarding a plane to Florida. Slide film, C41 color, black-and-white; I brought it all and shot it all during my time away with the family. Just yesterday my scans arrived from the lab by e-mail, and you’ll never guess what happened next!

You probably guessed.

I was disappointed.

The lab technician’s notes said it all – “You were working with some old film here, so expect the usual; low contrast, tons of grain, color shifts and bad exposures.” I opened the folders and, sure enough, found low contrast, tons of grain, color shifts and bad exposures.

Over the next five hours I did everything that I could to salvage the best of the shots in Lightroom, and some of the photos have ended up… fine. I might even like some of them – wow! But getting these shots to where they are now took major adjustments. And there’s no escaping the truth that the shots that I like would’ve been liked a lot more had they been shot on new film or with a digital camera. They’d be crisp and sharp and pop with vibrancy and beautiful colors and tonality and show ultra-fine grain and – oh, can you imagine? Well, you’ll have to imagine. Because the shots I got, ain’t it.

Expired film can, of course, be a beautiful medium. But its unpredictability and unreliability, its extremely low hit rate, and its high cost (why are people selling expired film for more than fresh film?) make it a no-go for me in any but the most frivolous situations. I should’ve learned my lesson years ago, and maybe I have by now – expired film sometimes, but never when the photo matters.

One Lens Only, Please

From one hard lesson to one which I’ve finally internalized after seven years of shooting cameras professionally. I only need one lens.

Over the past seven years I’ve packed my bag for trips like this one with way too many cameras and lenses. I’d bring the wide-angle prime for that perfect landscape photo. The standard fast fifty for when the light gets low and I need that bokeh. I’d pack the telephoto zoom to take a specific shot of a specific lion on the Animal Kingdom safari, knowing well that the lazy king of the jungle would be sleeping under a shade rock just out of sight every time our ridiculous safari truck rambled on by. I recall one year I even brought a tilt-shift lens, which sat unused in the air-conditioned hotel room for the entirety of the trip.

Well, this time I brought one lens. Just one. For ten days away from home. And I couldn’t be happier with that choice.

Less to pack. Less to carry. Less to worry about. And as long as I chose the right lens, the right focal length, I’d miss nothing by bringing just one chunk of glass on a family trip away.

It took me a while to find my single favorite lens from within my favorite focal length. But now that I have, there’s no going back. I’ll never travel without it. But more importantly, I’ll probably never travel with anything else.

Slide Film is Best Film

Experience has taught me, as mentioned, that expired film is bad. And in my experience, the worst of the bad is expired slide film. I don’t think I’ve ever made a single good photo from a roll of expired slide film (and I’ve tried many times). Which is why, when I was shooting the single roll of slide film which I brought with me on this particular vacation, I actively thought with every shot “Ahh, another terrible photo.”

The phrase became my mantra, repeated with a psychotic, unhinged smile. Click! “Another terrible photo…” Click! “Another terrible photo…”

Well, time has once again proven that I’m a moron. The best photos from my ten rolls of expired film all came from that single roll of expired slide film – a roll of Kodak Ektachrome E100VS (Vivid Saturation) which expired in 2014. Who could have guessed?

I can’t explain it. But I do know this – slide film is great! Even the shots from this long-dead film are great! Which leads me to think that, had this been fresh, new slide film, the shots would be damn-near stunning, even with a ham-fisted, brainless sack of oatmeal like me holding the camera.

Next vacation I’ll consider bringing nothing but new slide film and see how we do. The operative word in that sentence being “new.”

One Camera Only, Please

There’s nothing better for creating great photos than to have a perfect understanding of the camera in your hands. I don’t care what camera it is, if you don’t know how to use it fast and without conscious thought your photos will be bad (or at least not as good as they could be).

I’ve written before about how to cheat at film photography. And the biggest cheat is to use a camera that gets out of your way and lets you focus on making the photo. That’s what I did on this vacation (for the most part). I brought my favorite camera, the one that I use when I want to make a good photo, the one that feels just perfect in my hands and does everything I need.

There were no instances during the trip in which I was looking down at the camera in my hands wondering how to make it do this, or that. I never accidentally shot in the wrong mode, never accidentally forgot to set the ISO, never picked the wrong shutter speed or aperture, and never took a photo with the lens cap still on (because lens caps are for nerds and I didn’t use one – also, it’s an SLR).

The camera just worked, which in turn allowed me to just work. And more importantly, it allowed me to take pictures fast so that I could get back to having fun with my kids. When picking your next camera, eschew complication and style and instead use the camera that just works (for you)!

The Last Lesson

2020 was not a great year. Despite a positive attitude and a generally forward-marching personal philosophy, I suffered major setbacks. I won’t complain or repeat what I’ve already written about previously, and I acknowledge that plenty of people have had a harder time recently than I have. But I’d be lying if I pretended that the past year wasn’t a killer.

Political upheaval in the country where I live, natural disasters, societal unrest, doom and death and end of days, a chilled bag of misery intravenously drip-fed into us by a destructive industrial news complex where numbers mean everything, conflict means clicks, and bad news sells big ads. And all of the turmoil somehow harder to take during an isolating pandemic which replaced friends and family with the cold unfeeling screens of our computers and phones.

Worse than anything, for me and my wife, was a jarring personal loss.

It’s easy to lose sight of what matters in life, with the crowding crush of the world relentlessly pressing in from all sides upon our own tiny lives. And when the strength to push back leaves us, when we’re tired and sad and depleted, it sometimes feels like there’s nothing we can do except to be crushed under it. We suffocate. Or we find some strength and push back.

This vacation, one where I took 360-odd photos, 70 of which might be decent, has helped me push back on the saddest year of my life. The trip was magic, the photography (a hobby which I’ve not engaged with in any real capacity in over a year) was fresh and useful. And looking through these photos for the first time last night reminded me of a lesson I’ve known for years, but had nearly forgotten. The last lesson learned shooting my vacation on film; photography is good, and family is everything.

The post What I Learned Shooting My Vacation on Film appeared first on Casual Photophile.

It happened this way – I bought four rolls of expired 35mm film on eBay for the low price of $420, and when the package arrived, it contained something extra. A strange, square box, a pack of Polaroid 600 film with an expiration date stamped on the bottom: July, 2005.

How did something so old survive and find its way to me? The universe made it so.

My Polaroid camera is called the One Step 2. While I love this camera, it’s hard to ignore the ways it limits my otherwise boundless creativity. This camera has no double exposure mode, no aperture control, no way to darkroom print or make cyanotypes, no way to add medium format-style film negative borders or to instantly convert my shots to video and post them to TikTok. Even worse than these limitations, the instant film it uses can’t be pushed.

I always push my film.

Always.

I consider the act of pushing film to be art itself, you understand.

Still, despite the limitations I persevered, knowing in my heart that I had the ability (the obligation) to coax the dormant masterworks from out the ten white-bordered square frames contained within my expired pack of Polaroid 600 film. I had only but to frame, and shoot, and art would be freed.

I sweated and cursed and gnashed my teeth and shot my shot, and seventy-two sleepless hours later, my photos had been made. The art had been made. And though I had at first bemoaned the limitations of the camera, I retrospectively believe that the camera’s limitations have in fact pushed my craft toward transcendence.

The ten photos that I made with my pack of expired Polaroid film are among the greatest photographs I have ever made. Perhaps greater than any that anyone has ever made.

Let me describe them, their creation, and their importance.

My first photo was of my firstborn daughter. She being the inspiration for so many things in my life, I found it fitting that she be the subject of the first of my ten masterpieces. She would be immortalized in my art. The greatest gift a father could give.

The photo is deceptively simple. She stands aside the window in my living room. The light cascades through the gossamer-thin curtains, bathing one side of her face in sunlight while leaving the other half enigmatically shrouded in shadow. Her gentle smile only hints at happiness. The sun, bathing only half of her face, reminds us that true happiness is unattainable. That even at our lightest moments, there is inevitable darkness. Who knew that such a powerful image could be made with just a window and a pack of Polaroid film?

Me.

I knew.

Beyond the photo’s sophisticated conceptual overtone, it is rich with aesthetically pleasing qualities. Among the most striking of its visual bounty is its exceptional tones. Much is said about “tones” in the film photography community. Those who have mastered creating a tone are lauded, and rightly so. In my photo, we see something even more.

Not only is the entire right hand side of the frame a tone in and of itself, but the left hand side, paradoxically shows an entirely. Different. Tone.

Notice the way that the tones juxtapose one another, while also allowing each to speak for itself, individually, on its own, singularly, as one. Having just one tone in this photo would have been enough. I have made a photo with two tones. This was not easy to pull off, especially considering the aforementioned limitations of both the expired Polaroid film and the rather hamstrung Polaroid camera which was used to make the photograph.

The way that I managed to create these two contrary yet complementary tones within a single photograph is very difficult to explain. The complexities of the tones and the mechanisms needed to make them are sadly beyond many casual photographers. At the least, they are too complicated to explain with a single written language.

I know that this is a let-down, that many of you are here specifically to understand how I create my art so that you may grow yourselves as artists. A noble pursuit, made even nobler when we consider that the heights of talent held in these pages can be reached by so few.

The best that I can do for now, is to advertise that I’m currently outlining a one-on-one mentorship program. In this program, conducted via text message, I will personally instruct you on how to create tones. Pricing has yet to be determined, but we’d like the course to be available to everyone – cost will fall between $999 and $1,500 per fifteen-minute block of text messaging. More on this in the coming months.

Lest you think for a moment that I am but a one-hit wonder, capable of creating only a single masterpiece out of a ten shot pack, I would draw attention to eight of the remaining nine photographs.

You’ll notice that I’ve made amazing photos of many subjects, the variety of which showcases my range as an artist. See these shots below – a gas station, a mailbox, one corner of an old car’s headlight, an intentionally over-flashed portrait, bokeh, and one of my personal favorites, a shopping cart. (Please don’t screenshot these – I am planning to sell them as NFTs.)

Sharp-eyed readers will have noticed that that I’ve only included nine of my photos in this article.

There’s a reason for the missing photo.

The tenth and final photograph of the pack could not be included in this article. When it was ejected from the camera, a strange thing happened. I don’t know how to explain it.

I heard the sound of harps, an organ, a choir. A white light surrounded me, engulfed me, became me. The tenth photograph held in my hand seemed to float from my palm, to hover in air for just a moment before it folded into itself in what can only be described as an iridescent collapse, an imploding bloom of light. I had made an infinity photograph. All sound ceased. The photograph diminished to a single, brilliant point of light – and simply vanished.

Where that photo has gone I may only guess.

But there’s a light living within me now. I can feel it. I have become something more, something pure. I feel that I am now above the term “artist.”

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The post My Limitless Talent, Shot On Expired Polaroid Film appeared first on Casual Photophile.

I snap out of it. “Eh? What’s that? Oh yeah, of course we can go swimming, honey.”

That first paragraph was a laugh. Things ain’t so bad. It’s been a challenging year so far, sure. My kids are struggling with the isolation, they lost half a year of pre-school. My businesses have suffered pretty badly. The pandemic statistics in my country, which had been improving throughout the spring, have now rocketed up with frightening intensity in June and July. There’s a lot to worry about. But I’m healthy, and more importantly, so is my family. Many others haven’t made it this far, those of us who have are lucky, and we need to work together to get through this.

Ian Fleming once wrote about the trials of life, “…there’s no top limit to disaster – that, so long as breath remains in your body, you’ve got to accept the miseries of life. They will often seem infinite, insupportable. They are part of the human condition.” In the novel from which this quotation is lifted, the character suffering miseries eventually does overcome, changed, but alive. We all have to muster up and keep going. I have it easier than a lot of people. Mustering up for me means putting my two tiny daughters into their bathing suits and making sure they have a fun day in and around the pool, that I teach them some spelling, and maybe some numbers (what I call “the devil’s letters”).

There’s also the pressing concern of keeping articles flowing on this website during a time when it’s virtually impossible for me or my writers to get out and shoot interesting photos. To this end, mustering up involves somehow turning this normal day into a day which might produce an article for you, dear readers. I grab my Leica R5 and swap the relatively boring 50mm Summicron for my favorite lens, the far more interesting ultra-wide 21mm Super Angulon, and contemplate my stash of dead stock film.

Within my collection of ancient emulsion-coated acetate are rolls of sixty-year-old black-and-white 35mm films from Kodak. But I’ve written about those before. Portra VC and UC, but Drew covered those. There’s a pack of color Agfa 110 film from the 1980s, but 110 cameras generate within me an involuntary convulsion not unlike those experienced after eating baked stuffed shrimp that has been warming in the sun for eight hours. There’s a roll of Konica VX, but I’ve done that too.

But what’s this; a type of film that I’ve never shot. Kodak Supra 100. That’ll do.

What is (was?) Kodak Supra 100

Kodak Supra first released early in the year 2000. It was available in ISOs of 100, 400, and 800, each offering extremely fine grain (virtually non-existent in the 100 ISO version), high color saturation, and accurate reproduction of light skin tones. The film was immediately popular with professional photographers shooting events, landscapes, fashion, and more, a real all-around performer. Interestingly, it was among the least expensive of Kodak’s film range at the time, which likely added to its popularity.

In June of 2003, after just three years of popularity, Kodak announced that Supra was being discontinued. On June 18th of the same year Kodak’s stock fell ten percent. Now, I’m not saying these two events are directly rela- wait, yeah I am. I am saying they’re related. Kodak slashed one of their most popular films and the company’s value tanked. Don’t do it again, Big K.

The color profile of Supra film (when new) was one of richness, with greens, reds, and blues receiving equal vibrancy. Color temperature trended toward the warmer end of the spectrum. Contrast was high. Grain was super fine. It was a film of gorgeous imaging characteristics. But these are now somewhat moot. Today, even the most recently produced roll of Kodak Supra will be more than seventeen years old. Instead of the wonderful imaging keyword sizzle with which Kodak sold their Supra steak, a marketer marketing Supra today would use words like “color shift,” “increased grain,” and “under-exposure.” This film is past its prime.

Shooting Kodak Supra 100 Today

Ah, expired film. My most hated of all films. An utter waste of time and energy, not to mention money. Why do I shoot expired film? If not for this site, I wouldn’t do it. And neither should you. But if you ignore my wisdom and decide that you’ve an excess of time and energy and money, and you’ve just got to scratch that expired film itch, well then, here’s what you’ll get with Kodak Supra 100.

In a previous The Expired Film Chronicles I’ve written hilariously about the “expose an extra stop for every decade” rule. What a wild ass rule. Man, film photography in 2020 is a real laugh. Anyway, I rated my roll of Kodak Supra 100 at ISO 50, which is simply an extra stop of exposure, if that helps.

Image results from my day outside are surprisingly pleasant. I enjoy the photos, anyway. I’m not sure how much value they’ll have to those outside of my familial circle, since they’re just snapshots of my kids. But hey, this is my website. If you don’t like it, start your own. It’s easy. Anyone can do it. All you need to do is completely sacrifice your social life, write and edit articles every night from 8:00 PM to midnight instead of hanging out with your spouse or sleeping, and spend upward of $20,000 a year to keep it going. It’s easy!

I shot my roll of film by the pool, trying to really stretch the scene with my 21mm lens. Portraits of the kids, shots made into the sun. Knowing the lineage of Kodak Supra 100, with its ultra-fine grain and incredible color rendition, I sought to emphasize the brightness of the day and the vibrancy of the colors to be found around a glistening swimming pool. I expected little, as always with expired film, and when the roll was finished I sent it off to Richard Photo Lab for processing. They always do exceptional work. And they returned 38 shots from a 36 exposure roll of film, which instantly made me think of Ken Rockwell’s weird flex where he’s always bragging that he can get more than the indicated number of exposures on a roll of film. Chill out, Ken. That’s not even a thing.

Shots came back with lowered contrast than would be found with fresh film and some extra grain in the shadows, which I expect when shooting dead stock. Likewise I see heavy color shifts that are again most noticeable in the shadows. However there’s a generally muted, almost pastel feeling to the color of the images that I actually love. This has replaced Supra’s trademark high saturation, and it serendipitously overlays with the theme of sunny summer days by the pool. I’m not sure I’d be as happy with the look if I were shooting product photography, or portraits where color accuracy is critical, but why would I do that? I mean, I don’t necessarily like myself, but I’m not quite ready to torture myself either.

My favorite child (being held by my daughter).

As an off-topic aside, the Leitz 21mm did a great job. What an amazing lens. every time I shoot it I’m reminded that it’s one of the best lenses I’ve ever used, and one that I’ve never seen anybody appreciate outside of this site. Maybe I’m wrong. It’s happened before. Let me know.

Final Thoughts

I end a lot of my articles with a “Final Thoughts” segment. Therein I attempt to condense the sometimes-2,000-or-so preceding words into a single paragraph or two. I’d love for this “Final Thoughts” segment to be sponsored by a large corporation. Perhaps, and I’m just noodling here, but follow along. Thoughts come from the brain. The human brain is contained within the cranium. Boardgame maker and multinational conglomerate Hasbro, Inc. makes a game called “Cranium.” This would work. Tell Hasbro on Twitter, or something. We need some money.

Final Thoughts (not yet) sponsored by Cranium, a Hasbro Game

Color negative films tend to perform horribly once expired, but my roll of Kodak Supra 100 surprised me with its vibrancy and punch, even after almost two decades of languishing in unknown storage conditions. I enjoyed the day shooting it, and I enjoy the resulting images. I don’t seek expired film. The risk/reward just isn’t logical to me. But if I run across another roll or two of Kodak Supra, I’ll be happy to give it a shot. Preferably on a nice, summer day.

Find your own expired Kodak Supra 100 on eBay

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[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]

The post Shooting a Twenty-Year-Old Roll of Kodak Supra 100 Film appeared first on Casual Photophile.

There’s a path near my house that meanders through a sprawling field and eventually leads to a rocky perch overlooking a bay. In spring and summer, the field is full of wildflowers and the ocean water is, if not exactly warm, then at least not incompatible with life. In winter, the field is stripped, the turf is yellow, and the water is freezing. In any season, there’s nowhere that Cooper would rather be. The long walk to the beach gives him room to run, and the ocean offers this waterdog a natural habitat. He swims, no matter the temperature.

I take Cooper to this bay as often as I can, and long-time readers have seen the place before. Many of the articles on this website have featured photos of my lovable, idiot dog in various states of filthiness, the ocean bay stretching off into the background. But we don’t go there often enough, and Cooper’s days are numbered. So when I stumbled upon an unusually old roll of Kodak Plus X film and wondered where and what to shoot with it, the answer came automatically.

What is Kodak Plus X

The roll of film was found stashed in the belly of some ancient, leather sack, bursting with photographic goodness from the 1960s. This happens a lot. We take a giant shipment of camera gear into the shop and find a cornucopia’s worth of accessories and books and manuals and filters and expired film – the bread and butter of brick and mortar camera shops which themselves long ago expired.

Mostly we toss the expired film into a cooler and give it away throughout the year. We try to only sell new film, as we can’t guarantee the efficacy of expired stock and we don’t want people to waste their time and money, or miss an important shot on account of unreliable film. But this roll of film was different. I’d never seen it before, and the canister was eye-catching. A brilliant color scheme of yellow against magenta, blocky text and an older Kodak logo. I slipped it into a vintage, metal Kodak film holder and slipped that in turn into a glass cabinet where I put things that tickle my fancy – the “do not sell” case.

Some quick research revealed the details of the film inside; Kodak Plus X Pan, a black-and-white panchromatic 125 ISO film. Plus X was first produced as motion picture film in 1938, and then offered in 35mm and medium format for still cameras beginning in the 1940s. It remained in production with minor changes for over seventy years, until its discontinuation in 2011.

My roll dates from a period before the switch from earlier 20 exposure rolls to newer 24 exposure rolls, which occurred in the late 1970s. With this fact, and some sleuthing over graphic design changes and cross-referencing of expiration dates of similar looking rolls, the evidence seemed to indicate that my roll of film was likely produced sometime between 1969 and 1979. That means that this roll of film would be, at the time of shooting, somewhere between forty to fifty years old. My expectations were suitably restrained.

Making the Shots

There’s a whole lot of dubious information on the internet about shooting expired film. A small percentage of this advice is great, and comes from experienced shooters who are qualified to give it. All of the rest is not. The challenge, generally speaking, is that the unqualified advice is indistinguishable from the sage wisdom because there’s no one to tell us what’s true. This is the internet that we have built, one in which editors and gatekeepers have been discarded in the pursuit of egalitarian publishing and free information. It’s chaos, but then again, I’m part of the problem.

One famously obtuse wisdom is the “over-expose by one stop for every decade past expiration” rule. I scoffed at this rule the last time I wrote about expired film. The truth is, this rule is silly. It may anecdotally have worked for some of us in the past, but it’s unscientific at best, downright idiotic at worst. The age of the film is just a single variable in a multivariate equation in which it’s nearly always true that none of the other variables are known. Without knowing how the film was stored or without factoring for film speed or development chemicals, for example, we can’t get consistent or predictable results from expired film. For these reasons, my only unbreakable rule when shooting expired film is to expect the worst.

The question remained; how do I shoot this stuff?

When I loaded the decades-old Kodak Plus X, I knew there would likely be some fogging from decades of background radiation. Then again, slower speed film fogs less than higher speed film, so the relatively low ISO of Plus X would work in my favor. And black-and-white film is more stable compared with color films. I’ve shot slow expired slide film at box speed and it’s come out great. I’ve over-exposed Konica VX film by four stops and got nothing back but underexposed slop. Shooting expired film really can be miserable.

For this particular excursion into misery, I decided on an ISO setting of 50. I suspected that this would help me burn through whatever fog may have bloomed in the four or five decades that the film had sat dormant (in a freezer? closet? coal scuttle? fallout shelter?) and help conjure up some shadow detail in my final images. I also recognized that this might result in blown highlights and require adjustment to my development process. Then again, thinking about all of the variables and possible failure points annoyed me, and I had two kids and a dog to wrangle. I decided to stop worrying and shoot.

I chose to shoot this film in my Leica R5 for three reasons. First, the R5 would allow me to manually set my ISO, a necessity for reasons which I’ve already posited. Next, the R5 has a phenomenally accurate light meter and would allow me to shoot in aperture-priority auto-exposure mode. Lastly, the camera owns (and the 21mm Super Angulon attached to it owns, too).

The drive to the path that leads to the bay is quick, about three minutes. Cooper’s face is pressed against the front window as he rides co-pilot, my very own Chewbacca. The girls are in the back, laughing and singing. Life is good.

We get to the field and spill out of the car. Cooper’s ready to run, and off he goes. The girls pick their way along the path behind me, aged four and almost-three, not too sure on their feet as they shimmy across the frozen earth. I get to shooting, while calling over my shoulder to watch for ice and snow.

There’s nothing too miraculous happening here, not much to point a camera at unless you’ve read Carl Sagan and appreciate the impossible luck that’s allowed me and my kids to exist and walk and enjoy the seasons and the planet. There’s not much to notice unless you look close and discover the seedlings that have frozen into crystalline starbursts in a three-inch deep puddle, a miniature glacier with all the depth of a swirling galaxy. Not much to appreciate unless you’re waxing nostalgic about your dog and his life, and how little of it he has left.

I think there’s always something to photograph because there’s always something for which to be grateful. But I guess I’m feeling too grateful, because before we’ve reached the ocean my film frame counter’s already reading 21. And this film is supposed to allow just 20 exposures.

We get to the beach, and without hesitation Cooper’s in the water. The girls are looking for shells and I want a shot of my dog up to his neck in ocean. I get as close as I can and take the shot. It’s the only one I get, because when I advance the film it catches halfway. The 20 exposure roll is exhausted. A quick rewind and it’s time to switch to the Canon MC point-and-shoot (review coming) and the digital Sony a7 I’ve brought for product photos. When I notice that the Sony is missing its memory card, I swear in frustration. My daughter rightly scolds me for saying mean things as I stow the useless digital device in my bag and give up on photography for the day. Oh well.

Cooper spends the next half hour diving in and out of the water. He plunges his face under the waves like a duck hunting whatever it is ducks hunt when they dive, and rises a handful of seconds later with an enormous rock in his mouth. This he proudly carries to the shore, deposits it on the sand, and turns back to repeat the chore. In a few moments he’s made quite an impressive cairn.

The girls and I find shells and examine pebbles and sea glass while Cooper laps back and forth twenty feet out to sea. He occasionally storms the beach and sprints past, splashing us with sand and mud and saltwater. Five years ago I’d be annoyed. Now, I just laugh along with my kids. When it’s time to head home, he leaps from one rock to the next, and down the path back to the car, spry as he was back when. He’s happy and healthy and looking young.

Developing the Film

In preparation for the developing of my decades old film, I asked around for advice. The horrendous repository of unceasingly bad information known as  Facebook photography groups resulted in about forty suggestions of different processes, with each suggester claiming that theirs was the only method that would produce a usable image. Other more trusted sources gave me extremely complicated and time-consuming development methodology that would have likely resulted in the best images possible if only I wasn’t, quite frankly, too lazy and busy to bother with them. In the end, I laid my film at the alter of Kodak.

I found an old data sheet in Kodak’s archives which gave me all of the information I’d ever need on the later formulation of Kodak Plus X. This naturally included development times. I took their recommended development time and unscientifically added two minutes. “That oughta do something. What’s the worst that could happen.”

After fifteen minutes or so my negatives begin their rinse in cold water. A few minutes later I pull them from the spool and we have images. What a relief. More than a relief, what a surprise. This film is forty-something years old! And the photos are actually pretty good. Sharp, fine grained, nice tonality. I like them. And with expired film, that’s all I can hope for.

In the End

I end my experience shooting a roll of Kodak Plus X that’s older than I am, impressed. The images aren’t perfect, of course. There’s a loss of shadow detail, and the highlights are blown in places, and all of the photos taken indoors weren’t usable due to under-exposure. It’s possible that I could have rated my film at ISO 25, or developed longer, or used stand developing, and thus increased my hit rate. But my history with expired film told me that I was wasting my time. That this ancient roll of film would yield nothing but foggy, vague, and unusable photos, so I didn’t try very hard.

But I’m glad I shot this stuff. It’s reaffirmed my love for film and reminded me that I need to shoot more black-and-white. I’ll do that, and spend however long I can capturing Cooper and my girls on Kodak T-Max and Ilford Delta and whatever else catches my eye.

My cat died a few months ago. I’m not sobbing about it, but I admit that it’s sad and I do wish he was still alive. Cooper’s undeniably getting old. It takes him longer to rise from a laying position, and I can see his legs tremble almost imperceptibly between laps around the house, laps which take longer than they would’ve two years ago. I don’t know that he’ll still be here two years from now. It’s heartbreaking, but nothing lasts forever. Except, maybe, film.

Find your own expired Kodak Plus X on eBay

Buy fresh film from our own F Stop Cameras

Follow Casual Photophile on Facebook and Instagram

[Some of the links in this article will direct users to our affiliates at B&H Photo, Amazon, and eBay. By purchasing anything using these links, Casual Photophile may receive a small commission at no additional charge to you. This helps Casual Photophile produce the content we produce. Many thanks for your support.]

The post Shooting a Forty Year Old Roll of Kodak Plus-X Film appeared first on Casual Photophile.