Shooting an Expired Roll of Fuji Sensia 400
Rummaging around at my local market I sometimes come across interesting, expired rolls from yesteryear which make for fun experiments. Slide film is what I look out for in particular as there are so few options left, and what is left is now very expensive. Expired negative film tends to be more predictable, simply give it more exposure and you will normally end up with a decent image, even if the colours are a bit shifted. Slide film on the other hand is much more unpredictable. Due to its nature as a reversal film, you can’t blast it with more light, yet its age can give you images that are faded with little contrast.
But ultimately when I’m picking up these rolls for so cheap, there really is nothing to lose by just having a go. High ISO slide films are now non-existent so I’m even more keen to pick up those and I just so happened to come across a roll of Fuji Sensia 400, which I thought would be the perfect way to shoot my first roll of slide film with my grandad’s Kodak Retina iiiS. The higher ISO giving me more leeway to use smaller apertures that suit these older rangefinders.
As I had no idea what results I would get I decided to just photograph fun things with it, rather than anything serious. About half the roll I shot when a friend came to visit me from London and the second half was a few odds and ends, mostly local, but I also decided to push the boat out a bit and shoot a three-photo panoramic of the view from the top of hill at Greenwich Park. I shot the roll at ISO 320 to give a little bit more exposure to compensate for it being expired, but not too much that I would start to overexpose the roll. A few images came out a bit underexposed but otherwise I think I got it about right.
As this roll of film is ISO 400, expired (the date is unknown, but I suspect it was about twenty years expired) and being shot through an old camera and lens that doesn’t stand up to later SLRs like my Nikon F100, the levels of detail are not brilliant, and the colours are certainly washed out and purply. But who cares? I’m just thrilled I got useable images out of it, especially as some of the memories captured are really fun ones. And that for me is what film photography is all about, enjoyment and capturing memories in a physical and tangible way. I guess I’ll have to do a bit more rummaging.
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