A couple of pictures from Mablethorpe beach today, and my last (possibly ever?) Kodak Plus-X shots given I have no more of this expired film left – although I do have a single roll of Plus-X Pan, which I think may be an earlier version. That one is 35mm though, and expired in 1988.
The second picture shows the outfall where The Cut, a man-made drainage channel that winds its way through the flat Lincolnshire countryside, enters the North Sea.
Something good that happened today…
I had a parcel to send so I went for a walk to the collection point (a local convenience store about a mile away). The weather was lovely, with bright winter sunshine, blue skies, and a relatively mild 10° C temperature. After this week’s unsettling news, it was good to get out in the fresh air and stretch my legs.
Fujica GW690 & Kodak Plus-X (expired January 2008 and shot at 100asa). Adox Rodinal 1+50 13mins @ 20°
The beach at Bridlington is backed by a sea wall along the stretch in front of the town north of the harbour area. This means there’s a good vantage point for looking down upon the sand and seeing the activities of the people enjoying the seaside, including writing messages in the smooth wet sand.
Despite my own spelling often being atrocious (albeit usually due to my inaccurate keystrokes, rather than an inability to spell), I seem to be quite good at seeing other peoples typos, such as the ones present in the first two pictures shared today. To be fair to the authors, it’s a lot easier to spot them from up on the promenade, than it probably is a beach level.
The third shot is spelt accurately, although it’s missing an apostrophe in “mums” and the spacing leaves a little to be desired. It’s not lacking in impact though, and I wonder what “mum” thought about the message?
Back to black and white again. The coming series of posts will be photographs I made during a day trip to Bridlington with my wife back at the start of August.
This shot seems quite grainy for FP4+, but I do like the light and the expansiveness of the beach, with the coast curving around to the distant promontory of Flamborough Head.
Back at the end of June I spent the day in Blackpool for The Big Film Photowalk, a series of events around the country that had been organised by Analog Wonderland, the UK based film stockist. I posted about the events of the day here.
While the photowalk in Blackpool took place in Stanley Park, about a mile or so from the seafront, I parked near the town centre as my wife and her sister had accompanied me for the day and were planning on wandering round the shops while I went to take photos. As I was early for the photowalk, I took the chance to go and shoot some photos on a second camera I’d brought with me – my OM-10 – loaded with a roll of expired Fuji C200.
As I said in my other post, the weather on the day was not what I would have chosen. And while the photowalk had its share of drizzle and gloom, the beginning of the day along Blackpool’s seafront was worse, with bouts of full rain and a stiff breeze to contend with. I wasn’t confident of success, especially as I would usually prefer black and white for these conditions, not expired C41 film. Thankfully though, I was wrong, and I really like these colour pictures. They certainly capture the mood, and where there is colour in the scene, it really jumps out of the frame.
I managed to get pictures of the central and north piers, some (unused!) deckchairs, the sea defences, and obligatory shot of Blackpool tower, a shelter, a slightly pitiful looking crazy golf course, and some hardy metal detectorists on the beach.
Olympus OM-10 & G.Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 on Fujifilm C200 (expired 2012 and shot at 100asa) . Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I still have a sizeable backlog of photos that I haven’t yet published on the blog (or, in some cases, even uploaded to Flickr yet). I’ve already posted quite a few pictures that I took at this year’s Sheffield Steam Rally back at the end of June, but those were all medium format shots. I also finished off a roll of expired Fuji C200 on the day as well, and the photos below are the best from that batch.
Hopefully, in the coming days, I’ll share the rest of the photos from this roll, which were taken elsewhere and turned out better than I had expected…
Olympus OM-10 & G.Zuiko 35mm f/2.8 on Fujifilm C200 (expired 2012 and shot at 100asa) . Lab developed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.
I’ve aquired some more expired film, some of past it’s best date by quite some margin – the oldest roll being the Ilford FP3 which is dated 1970! Now, normally I would stay away from old film such as this, but this didn’t cost me too much and I thought it might make for an interesting series of blog posts as I shoot the stuff and present the results here.
For the curious, the batch includes the following (in chronological order – oldest to newest):
1 x Ilford FP3 – 1970
1 x Ilford FP4 – 1981
4 x Ilford HP5 – 1982
1 x Kodacolor VR 400 – 1989
5 x Kodak Vericolor HC – 1991
1 x Ilford FP4 – 1993
1 x Kodak Vericolor VPL – No date on packaging, but I expect 1980s / 90s
1 x Kodak Tmax 200 – No date on packaging, but again probably 1980s / 90s (it was manufactured from 1986 I believe)
1 x Polaroid Polachrome – No date on packaging, but sometime after 1983 which is when it was introduced.
1 x Polaroid Polapan – No date on packaging, but sometime after 1983 which is when it was introduced.
1 x Polaroid Polablue – No date on packaging, but sometime after 1983 which is when it was introduced.
My plan is to try and shoot at least a roll of this each month. The HP5 and Vericolor both have the advantage of there being multiple rolls so I can shoot one and then re-assess exposure times for the remaining film. All the others are something of a crapshoot though, so I’ll be using the 1-stop of overexposure per decade of expiry rule for the colour stuff, and probably the same but with just half as much overexposure for the B&W. I’ve not decided on what chemicals I’ll use to develop the B&W (the colour will go to the lab), but probably not my expensive DD-X. Maybe Adox Adonal, but we’ll see.
The Polaroid film is possibly the most interesting of the lot – each roll comes with it’s own developing cartridge (and the film needs to be processed in a dedicated Autoprocessor device), so I’m looking forward to seeing how that stuff turns out.
It may be that the whole lot is an absolute waste of my time and effort, but I’m going to aim for optimism and, at the very least, there will be some blog posts falling off the back of the experience.
The oldest roll of expired film I’ve shot previously was some Kodacolor Gold 200 which had expired in 1989. While that showed definite signs of deterioration (odd colours and a mottled appearance) I was quite taken by the results, and I managed to win a prize in Expired Film Day from one of the shots. You can see some of those results here. I still have another roll of that same film in the feezer too.
As this post has been about expired film that I plan to shoot, here’s a photo made on some expired film that I did shoot five years ago. That roll was over twenty years expired and still produced lovely images, including this one.
Nikon F70, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 AF-D & Kodak Tmax 100 (expired 1994 – shot at 50asa and developed for box speed).
Steel City Snapper photography 