Expired Film! We either hate or love it! Hate it because we just spent hours shooting and developing just to find an emulsion full of mess or love it because we just managed to successfully shoot, expose, develop and print a film that was made 30 years ago.
See the Video…
This Soviet film was produced around the late 80’s and was kindly sent to me by the Ukrainian Film Photography Group, in Ukraine. And this film is being re-spooled and sold by an online store in Ukraine.
It is one of those low ISO films. 12 ISO. Your first thought is that pain in the arse word – TRIPOD. I love tripods. Where would we be without them. But at the same time they are a pain to lug around the streets. And most of the time public areas such as shopping centres and complexes won’t let you use one. Try taking a tripod on the South Bank in London. You get told to put it away! But. With ISO 12 you have no choice.
I don’t know the history of this film. I couldn’t find much concrete answers online. Maybe it was originally a 100 speed and because of the age the people spooling and labelling it have stamped ISO 12 on the box to count for sensitivity. Whatever it is, it is really nice!
After doing some developing tests (you can see the video here) I set out to shoot some still life subjects indoors as a test. I have two rolls to play with. I set up a simple scene indoors with some rather old objects.
And here are the results after rotary processing in ID-11 for 9 minutes 1/1 at 20 degrees. Camera was a Nikon FM3A with a 50mm Zeiss Milvus Lens. I set the Aperture to f2.8 which gave me exposure times of just 1 second. I din’t want to go slower than that incase I hit reciprocity.
I then took the camera to a local attraction called Arreton Barns. This place is basically a Pub and Restaurant with a few small barn shops scattered around. The owner collects old stuff and he puts them on show around his premises.
What a beautiful film! I must admit I was surprised. The film base feels very much like Ilford films. Quality. And for the price, which the guys in Ukraine are selling it at, £2.70 or there about it’s a steal!
The negatives printed really well in the darkroom too with most straight off a 2.5 grade filter. The screenshot from the video doesn’t do it much justice.
And this one I framed.
It just goes to show that, even though expired film is a gamble, sometimes it has been stored well and still gives quality results today if exposed and developed correctly.
