Expiryment #5: Kodak Vericolor HC (expired 1992)

November 23, 2024February 2, 2025 fishyfisharcadeLeave a comment

It’s been a while since the last one of these posts, but with a shorter gap than before – 7 months this time, as opposed to the 17 month gap between the last two Expiriment posts.

This time, the subject was a roll of Kodak Vericolor HC which had expired in 1992. I have no idea of the entire provenance of the film before I got it, although it’s been in my freezer for about three years now.

Kodak describes Vericolor HC as follows:

KODAK VERICOLOR HC
Professional Film
This improved color negative film has greater sharpness and finer grain than KODAK VERICOLOR II Commercial Film, Type S.
This film is ideal for commercial illustration, industrial applications, low-level aerial photography, environmental portraiture, and other applications that call for increased contrast. It may also be used for any copy work that needs increased contrast, and for outdoor portraiture under low-contrast lighting conditions, such as on cloudy days or in deep shade.

FEATURES
•	Extremely fine grain, extremely high sharpness, and high resolving power
•	Built-in dye mask
•	Balanced for exposure by daylight, blue flash, or electronic flash
•	Designed for processing in Process C-41 chemicals

BENEFITS
•	Produces excellent-quality high-contrast prints even with a high degree of enlargement
•	Makes excellent-quality color reproduction possible without supplementary masking
•	Allows exposures from 1/ 10 second to 1/10,000 second without filters
•	Can be processed with KODACOLOR and other KODAK VERICOLOR Films

I took a different approach when shooting this time. Usually I only have a single roll of a particular expired film and tend to take a chance and shoot the whole roll with the same settings, without any bracketing. This going-for-bust approach risks disaster if I misjudge the settings, but the reward is a full set of different images if it works well, rather than a curtailed set of identical compositions taken at different shutter speeds.

This time though, I decided to take the cautious apoproach. The primary reason for this being that I have an entire pro-pack of the film so using one roll as a sacrifice would mean I can shoot the other four knowing what settings will work well. In order to still maximise the number of different compositions, I chose to shoot the roll with my Bronica ETRSi, which gives me 15 shots per roll of 120 film. I decided to shoot each composition at three settings, allowing me five different compositions from the roll.

I didn’t see any point in shooting any of the shots at box speed, so planned on shooting each composition at one, two, and three stops of overexposure. As the film is rated at a box speed of 100asa, I chose to set my light meter to 64asa as a baseline, take a reading for the composition, and then shoot two additional frames with an increase of one stop of exposure for each. That was the plan, at least…

This plan worked ok for the first shot, and the results can be seen below, withe the first image shot at the settings given for 64asa, and the following two images with a stop more exposure over the previous one:

Fot this first shot, the results were all good. The middle image (effectively shot at 32asa) is the one I prefer. The first doesn’t show any major issues with underexposure, although the sky is a bit deeper, and the third, while clearly brighter, is still very acceptable (and I would have been perfectly happy with it if I didn’t have the others to compare it to).

The results were similar for these shots of a willow tree:

Again, the middle image is the best exposed, I think.

The next six shots had an issue – not only did I tamper with the process by changing lenses, I also managed to somehow mess up the metering – shooting each shot at box speed, then one and two stops over for both these compositions. While this was an error, it just means that the best exposed image is now number three, with the fist shot in each sequence being at actual box speed for the film. It clearly shows problems rated at box speed in terms of underexposure.

—

For the final composition I realised my error and got back on track. The middle shot again being the best exposed.

Beyond the issues with underexposure and some small spotty defects in the emulsion, the results are pretty outstanding for a film that expired over thirty years ago. The colours still look very nice too.

I feel confident that, if I meter for 32asa, that I can expect pretty good results from the remaining four rolls I have, although I’ll perhaps overexpose a little more in dim conditions.

Overall outcome: Success!

Expiriment #6 coming soon (I do actually have some more expired film I’ve shot recently, so this might actually be true)…

Bronica ETRS1, Kodak Vericolor HC (expired 1992). Shot bracketed and lab developed for box speed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 11 November 2024

I’ve uploaded the images above directly to my blog, but if you want to see the ones with the best exposure at higher resolution, they can be found here on my Flickr account.

Other posts in the Expiriment series:

Expiriment #1: Ilford HP5 (expired 1982)

Expiriment #2: Kodacolor VR400 (e xpired 1989)

Expiriment #3: Truprint FG+ (expired 2003)

Expiriment #4: Kodak Portra 400NC (expired 2007)

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Expiryment #4: Kodak Portra 400NC (expired 2007)

April 14, 2024February 2, 2025 fishyfisharcade6 Comments

Despite my hopes and promises of doing one of these posts each month, I seem to have failed miserably when it comes to doing so – the last post in this (very occasional!) series was back in November 2022.

I did shoot another roll of expired film last summer but I was unhappy with the results and ended up converting the pictures to black and white. While they looks pretty nice after the conversion, these posts are aimed to be about keeping to the original results from the film used with a minimum of post processing. Converting to monochrome was a step too far.

No such worries with the next roll though, some 120 format Kodak Portra 400NC that expired in 2007. 2007 doesn’t feel like that long ago but it was prior to the global financial crisis and is fast approaching twenty years ago!

Portra 400NC was discontinued by Kodak in 2010, when the current range of Porta films (160, 400, and 800) was introduced. Kodaks description of 400NC was: “Offers fine grain, low contrast, and colors and skin tones that look real and natural in a variety of lighting situations.” There is a brochure online on Kodak’s website which covers the full rang of (as was) Portra films from this period. There’s a strong hint that it was aiming for the wedding photography market…

I don’t photograph weddings and, even if I did, there’s no way I’d risk a seventeen year old expired roll of unknown provenance on such a once-in-a-lifetime event. For the sort of subjects I normally photograph however, I was willing to take the risk.

Despite the limited number of shots, I decided to shoot it with my Fujica GW690 6×9 medium format camera, giving me just eight potential pictures from the roll. The first outing was to my favourite seaside haunt of Mablethorpe. Normally when I visit Mablethorpe I will wander around all day making photographs. However, this year, I took my dad along for a day out, so knew from the outset that I wouldn’t be shooting as much. In the even I only used three frames on this outing, and one of those was a misfire when the camera was in my bag! I’ve since started to avoid winding the film in the GW690 after taking a shot to prevent this expensive mistake from reoccurring. Unfortunately, the Mk I GW690 that I own doesn’t have the shutter button lock that the later models do.

So the first two shots from the roll were of beach chalets / huts that stand along the beach promenade. The weather on the day was bright, but a layer of thin high-level cloud, robbed the light of contrast. Nevertheless, for outdated film the results were pretty good.

The second batch of shots – the remaining five on the roll – were shot one misty morning at Rother Valley Country Park. While I find the park a little uninspiring due to over-familiarity, cold misty morning usually provide some nice pictures, and this occasion bore that out.

The first shot is a little dull perhaps, but the light was nice. It’s just a suburban street I walked on my way to the park. You can just make out the mist hanging over where the lake is in the middle of the shot though. There’s a line of pylons that run between the houses and the park. The towers are out of frame, but the powerlines themselves can be seen.

The next shot is one of my favourites from last year, a beautifully autumnal scene of a small maple tree, it’s leaves turning but not yet fallen, nicely separated from the background by the mist. I’m not sure if the colours are true to life, but they look gorgeous, so I’ll take that as a win.

The mist was already burning off under the gaze of the morning sunshine when I took the next picture. A simple landscape scene of the lake with the boating centre on the far bank. There’s still enough mist left to provide some pleasant atmosphere to the photo though.

I took another photo very similar to the one above which had a couple of swans in the frame, but the one above is the best, I think.

The last shot is another lone tree, but this time I shot directly into the light. It’s not as good as the other tree picture, but I do like the way the tufts of dew and cobweb covered grass are illuminated at the bottom of the frame. The lens of the GW690 shows no signs of flare, even in this challenging scene.

So, apart from a wasted shot, this was another expired film success. When I shoot old colour film I’m not really expecting accurate colours, just pleasing ones, and this delivered on that.

Overall outcome: Success!

Expiriment #5 coming soon (Yeah, I know…)…

Fujica GW690, Kodak Portra 400NC (expired 2007). Shot at 160asa and lab developed for box speed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 30 September and 25 October 2023

Other posts in the Expiriment series:

Expiriment #1: Ilford HP5 (expired 1982)

Expiriment #2: Kodacolor VR400 (e xpired 1989)

Expiriment #3: Truprint FG+ (expired 2003)

35mm · Film photography · Photography

Expiryment #3: Truprint FG+ (expired 2003)

November 12, 2022February 2, 2025 fishyfisharcade6 Comments

I’m back with the third of my expired film adventures. When I started this series (and I use that term in a loose sense) I think I might have mentioned doing one every month and, for the first two at least, I was true to my word. But it’s now been almost five months since the last entry, so apologies to anyone who was waiting with baited breath. I do still intend to keep doing these though, and hopefully more frequently.

This roll is the youngest one featured to date, being a sprightly nineteen years over its expiry date of 2003. It’s another colour film, this time both in 135 format, and also, I think it’s fair to say, a consumer grade stock. I have actually shot another roll of this previously and you can see some posts containing the results here. I shot the previous roll at box speed and, while I got some nice results, they were somewhat grainy and more than a little vivid, so for this roll I decided to overexpose by a stop and shoot it at 100asa.

But first a little background on the film, and how I got it.

Truprint were a mail order photo processing outfit where you wuld post your rolls of film out in a special envelope and then, a couple of weeks later, you would receive a set of prints AND a free roll of film to shoot more. The Truprint brand was still in business as a photo printing outfit up until fairly recently until it was bought out by Snapfish. Truprint provided a variety of films in the usual 100, 200, and 400asa varieties but these were, I believe, re-branded stocks from other manufacturers. The Big Film Database shows Agfa and Ferrania as the most likely originators of the film stocks used by Truprint. The roll I shot here was Truprint FG+ – a 200asa film, and one which appears to have been manufactured by Ferrania. Although the Big Film Database doesen’t specify this, other sources seem to indicate this particular stock was Ferrania Solaris.

I got hold of my two rolls from a lady who had found them in their fridge in her garage and who had asked online if they would be of any use to anyone. She told me they had always been in the fridge since purchase, which was a good sign, and was the main reason I chanced shooting the first roll at box speed.

I decided to shoot this second roll partially for some multiple-exposure photography I was attempting, for which I didn’t want to risk wasting a more expensive roll of film, but as I had no intention of using the whole roll for this purpose, I also went out on a sunny autumn morning to shoot a bunch of other frames of whatever subject matter I could find. I ended up in the Attercliffe area of the city – a former industrial area home to Sheffield’s once vast steel industry, but which has now become home to service businesses, retail, and entertainment outlets (although there is still a lot of industry in abundance, including steel foundries). Most of the pictures feature Sheffield Forgemasters, a heavy engineering firm that has been in existence since 1805. In the 1980s the company attracted controversy for it’s part in the Iraqi Supergun Affair, and in 2021 was nationalised because of it’s importance to the nation’s defence industry.

So, on to the results.

This roll came out very nicely indeed, possibly due to the overexposure, or perhaps it had just fared better than its companion roll. Whatever the case I would not be disappointed with these if they had come from a fresh roll of film – the grain is minimal and the colours look natural with just a hint of warmth (and that might just be in the way I processed the pictures in Negative Lab Pro and Lightroom). I’m very happy with the photos and would happily shoot more Truprint FG+ (if I had any).

Forgemasters — Autumn had arrived when the photos were made, and the colours reveal themselves well on the film – helped by the nice sunlight I had on the day.

Forgemasters-3 — More autumnal shades beside Sheffield Forgemasters.

Forgemasters-6 — Sheffield Forgemasters is a looming presence in this part of the city.

Sawtooth — Another industrial building in the area. Not part of Forgemasters, I believe this might be a scaffolding supplier now.

Funfair — One of the main entertainment facilities in Attercliffe is the Arena – currently the Utilita Arena, but it has gone under a number of sponsored names since construction though it is often known locally as the Don Valley Arena. There was a funfair taking residence in part of the carpark on the day I passed.

Overall outcome: Success!

Expiriment #4 coming soon (I hope…)…

Nikkon F80, Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 D, Truprint FG+ (expired 2003). Shot at 100asa and lab developed for box speed. Home scanned and converted with Negative Lab Pro.

Taken on 22 October 2022

Other posts in the Expiriment series:

Expiriment #1: Ilford HP5 (expired 1982)

Expiriment #2: Kodacolor VR400 (e xpired 1989)

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Expiryment #2: Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)

June 19, 2022February 2, 2025 fishyfisharcade9 Comments

This is the second in my series of expired film shoots. You can find a link to the others at the bottom of this post.

This second roll is a little younger than the last one I shot, but not by a huge margin, and it’s still over thirty years beyond it’s expiry date. It’s also a colour film, a fact that I’ve found can more adversely affect the resulting photographs. I find that expired black and white film is generally far more forgiving than colour. There are a number of things that can go awry with either format but, in general, it’s much easier to overlook a change in tonality in black and white than it is in colour. The reason is in the name: colour. While most people probably can’t tell if a greyscale tone is not totally accurate, they are far more atuned to when colours don’t look right, and expired colour film can bring a whole range of potential colour defects to bear on an image, with deterioration of the different dye layers resulting in a range of colour changes that the human eye easily picks up on.

An increase in grain is another thing that can occur with expired film and, again, is something that is less of a problem in black and white than colour. Sometimes grainy colour images can look great – look at Anton Corbijn’s colour pictures as an example – but in my own work, additional grain and colour noise in colour photographs tends to look muddy and unattractive.

Taking these things into consideration, I generally have a lot more trepidation when shooting expired colour film, and the faster the film, the worse these things can become as the addtional sensitivity can increase the possible deterioration.

For this installment I chose a roll of Kodacolor VR 400 which expired in May 1989, so 33 years past it’s recommended best when I shot it. As I don’t know how the film has been stored throughout it’s life I used the generally accepeted rule of thumb to overexpose it for one full stop for each decade of expiry and metered it at 80asa.

As with the last roll of expired film I shot, I decided to use my Yashicamat 124G again. This time though I decided to stay relatively close to home for the shoot and headed out to the local country park, which is about ten minutes away by foot. The weather was nice and bright but as I was shooting at 80asa I took my tripod with me in the event I needed to use slower shutter speeds. I managed to forget a cable release but, thankfully, none of the exposures was slow enough to be impacted by any camera shake from my pressing the shutter button with my finger.

All the shots were made either on my way to the park, at the park, or on the way home, all in the space of an hour or so.

As I don’t develop my own colour film as yet, I took the exposed roll to my local lab. I had a momentary pang of disappointment when I was told that it might have to be developed in B&W chemicals if there was a risk of the old film contaminating their C41 chems, but I was happy to discover colour negatives when I collected the developed film the next day.

The negatives were scanned at home on my Epson V550 flatbed scanner and converted to positive images with Negative Lab Pro. The scans had some noticable colour shifts but this was easily recovered in the conversion process. The resulting images are vibrant with good, albeit perhaps not completely accurate, colours. There is increased grain, most notably in the shadow areas but given the age of the film, nothing too bad.

I was very pleased with the results and managed to get twelve very useable images, with a few that I especially like – the shot of the steps being my particular favourite.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989) — The first shot on the roll and perhaps the one that most noticeably shows the worst of the colour shifts.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-2 — I tried to shoot with wide apertures where possible, mostly because I don’t tend to shoot that way with te Yashicamat much, but usually like the look when I do.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-3 — More use of a shallow depth of field.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-4 — I’ve photographed this short stretch of fence in the water on several occasions. It always tends to produce a picture I like.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-5 — The water here was a lovely aquamarine to my eyes but it hasn’t been captures well in the photograph unfortunately.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-6 — Another favourite from the roll. The greens of the grass look lush and the shallow depth of fiels makes the image pop.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-9

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-7

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-8 — I like this one, but it would have worked better with a shallower depth of field I think. Even at 80asa however, the light was too bright to open the aperture too much without busting the camera’s maximum 1/500sec shutter speed.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-10 — I wasn’t sure about this when I took it, but I think the contrast between the bright orange of the plastic netting and the organic greens of the reeds works well.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-11 — My favourite from the roll.

Expiriment #2 - Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989)-12 — I love the richness of the brown soil in the foreground of this picture.

Overall outcome: Success!

Expiriment #3 coming soon…

Yashicamat 124G, Kodacolor VR 400 (expired 1989). Shot at 80asa and lab developed for box speed.

Taken on 28 May 2022

Other posts in the Expiriment series:

Expiriment #1: Ilford HP5 (expired 1982)

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Expiryment #1: Ilford HP5 (expired 1982)

May 14, 2022February 2, 2025 fishyfisharcade13 Comments

This is the first in what I hope to be a series of posts in which I document the results from shooting some of the expired film I have in my stash – and I have quite a bit! However, in order to keep some sort of a leash on this exercise, I will only include film that is at least ten years past its use-by date.

For this first instalment, I’ve decided to send the Delorean back to 1982, back before Ilford added the “Plus” to it’s stocks, back before I’d even entered my teens, and show the results from a roll of HP5 that expired in December 1982.

I chose the HP5 for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I shoot the modern version of the film quite a lot, so was interested to see how they compare (even if it may be an unfair test given the age of this roll) and, secondly, because I have four rolls of this film all from the same year so this first one will serve as a useful test on how it performs before I shoot any more of it. While the person who I got the film from had kept the film frozen, I have no idea of it’s provenance before that.

The sensible thing would have been to shoot the film in, around, or at least fairly close to home. That way, should the experiment be a disaster, at least I wouldn’t have wasted too much time on it. But the weather was nice so I decided to head out into the countryside, to High Bradfield over on the other side of the city. It was a risk but, hey, you only live once, right? I also took a second camera loaded with a fresh roll of Ilford FP4+ as well but only took a single shot with it, so the weight of the expedition would rest on the forty year old HP5.

I loaded the film before leaving the house and almost immediately felt some mild panic when the Yashicamat’s film advance crank partially jammed after a few turns. But, after some gentle pressure, it continued to wind the film on to frame #1. Arriving at my destination, I shot five shots at High Bradfield before driving around the surrounding area and photographing anything that caught my eye. Most of the other pictures were taken around Broomhead reservoir further to the north, although none of the reservoir itself. I rated the film at 100asa using my usual half-a-stop of over-exposure per decade of expiry that I use for expired black and white films. All metering was via incident readings from my Sekonic L-308.

This is what old Ilford backing paper looks like. I’m not sure if the mottling is just a factor of its age.

As I went out early, I was home in time to get the film developed and decided to use some Adox Adonal for the job. Ordinarily I use Ilfotec DD-X when developing modern HP5+ as it controls the tones and grain really nicely but, as this was a roll of film decades past its best, I thought the Adonal might be a good choice as I’d read that it can help to reduce fogging where it exists on old films. I used a 1+25 dilution and developed the roll for six minutes, inverting for the first minute, and then for 10 seconds at the top of each remaining minute. After that I used a one-minute stop bath and then fixed for five minutes. I washed the film using the Ilford method and then a final soak in rinse-aid before hanging it to dry for three hours. I was very happy to see easily visible images on the negatives, albeit perhaps slightly thin ones. One thing that I noticed was that the strip of negatives had an unusual, waxy sheen (see the picture below). I’m not sure if this is a factor of the film (perhaps on a different base back then?), it’s age, or even my development (although the chems should all have been in good condition).

It’s perhaps difficult to tell from this picture, but the whole roll of developed negatives had an odd, waxy sheen to them.

So, on to the photographs.

Given the age of the film I’m very happy with the results. While the negatives were a little bit thin, this wasn’t a huge problem and I was able to rectify this for the most part during the scanning phase and in Lightroom (where I also applied my other usual processing and sharpening). The grain is much more apparent than I am used to with modern HP5+ but it’s possible that this is a result of my developing them in Adonal rather than the expired nature of the film – I’ve heard other’s speak about how Rodinal developers can emphasise the grain in HP5+.

I think that I’ll rate the next roll of this HP5 I shoot at 80asa, or maybe even 50asa, and I think I’ll develop the next one in DD-X to see what difference that makes, if any, to the grain.

Here are my favourite eight shots from the roll. The other four were all ok technically but I didn’t think they worked as well artistically.