Shooting 23 years old expired B&W film! Is it worth it? (Results)
Before I start telling you guys about my experience shooting expired film I feel like I have to address my absence for the past 3+ months. I've been MIA on Steemit since march, and don't really have a valid reason for it other than blaming it on my crazy busy school schedule for the past months. But, since I wrapped up my first year of college a couple of days ago which not only means that my summer break officially started, but also marks my comeback to steemit!
I have some pictures stockpiled that I've made throughout my 1st year of collage which I will share with you guys in future posts! For Todays post I'm sharing some 35mm film photos taken on the Olympus OM2 (1976) with a roll of 23 years expired AFGA Professional 100. The pictures aren't award winning, 10/10 images, but I still wanted to share these for the 5 people that maybe care about film.
The images shown below where developed as i would develop my non expired B&W film. Which means they developed for 7min, Stopped for 1 and fixed for 5-6min. After the drying proces was completed i scanned the images at a resolution of 20x30cm @ 300DPI.
Because I've never shot any expired film before I had to do some research on how to properly shoot expired film. A-lot, if not all forum posts I've read regarding this subject said that in order to expose correctly, you should overexpose one stop for every 10 years that the film is expired. So, having this knowledge in mind I shot my roll of AFGA 100 at ISO 50. Which gives me 1 stop of overexposure. Yes, my film is older than 10 years, even older than 20 in fact. But because I was just testing, I only did 1 stop over.
Is shooting expired film worth it? In my humble opinion it is. For B&W film, there's not a-lot of things that can go wrong, the only thing you "lose" is contrast which can easily can be brought back in the darkroom while making wet prints, or by scanning the negatives and editing the pictures like you would edit your digital.
I myself have no experience with color film, but it know for a fact that shooting expired color film can give some crazy results. Maybe I'll make a post about Color film in the future for you guys, but for now I'll stick with my trusted B&W :)
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Awesome! Try adding the #filmphotography tag :)
Will do that for my future posts! thank you :p
I really love the grain in the pictures! I think you did right by only overexposing 1 stop though, otherwise it would've been too bright (or that's the way you want to see it of course. I do like the moody/dark atmosphere, if you'd overexposed 1 stop more, the atmosphere would've been totally different).
Great job I would say! Definitely a yay for expired films!
I live for film with a-lot of grain! I'm currently stockpiling some ISO 800-1600 film to do some experimenting with my analog flash at night :) And yes, 2 stops over just didn't feel right for B&W. Expired color film may need more overexposure because it loses its sensitivity to light quicker then B&W film..definitely will be testing (And posting) that in the future though :)
Worth it! It brings out the grainy texture! (If I'm right, ahahaha)
It does! and its amazing :) Thanks for commenting, really appreciate it! :)
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Yes YES yes, it really is worth it! It gives you such an atmosphere in your photo's that you can hardly reach with digital images. Looking forward to your experiment with an expired colorfilm.
Film indeed creates an unique atmosphere digital images simply can't recreate. Thanks for commenting and showing interest :) really appreciate it!
So happy I’ve discovered your profile! I’m shooting expired too - mostly all expired actually. You should check out the series I’m continuing.