As you can read from the heading, this was a case of combining three elements that made photographing hard for me. Well, harder than usual anyways…
So, first of all I had this Kodak Ultra 400 film that had a develop before date of 11/2006. Meaning 15.5 years ago. Also I had no idea how it was storaged. I surely didn’t keep it in the fridge and I’m pretty sure no one did. So the question number one was how it would work out.
Then secondly, I used my 135 mm 3.5 prime manual lens for the first time. And third point is that I had to use it on live animals. Yeah.. good luck with that!
Yes I know these two aren’t animals. But they are mammals I guess. Ehrm I had to practice using the 135 mm and our 7th floor hotel room window just happened to provide good conditions for that. The result isn’t that good though.
So I did what they say you have to do when shooting with expired film. Overexpose by one stop for each decade the film is over the development date. So if the film development is 10 years due, you treat the 400 speed film like it was 200 speed. And that was what I did. But I’m not sure if it worked ok. And some say the rule of overexposing one stop by decade has no actual proof of concept. Well after seeing the images, I don’t know either. Some are good, some look a bit overexposed, or ”washed” but then again, it might just be the fact that the film was fucked up since it wasn’t storaged properly.
The last of these was the best of the bunch in my opinion. Overall the ones taken inside were better than the ones taken outside. But it might also be because of the lens. It seemed like the lens didn’t perform well if the subjects were far away. Also at some points it felt like the focus was in the plastic walls around the cages. Or I just fokin sucked.
These pics look kinda good but also same time kinda weird. Maybe because I missed focus? But I blame… something else! 🙂
Yeah nothing to see here. Except camels and donkeys. The zoo was still hibernating from the winter and all the big cats and bears shone in their absence. Well the cats were there but were mainly sleeping and hiding from people. Not that I blame them. All the screaming kids and idiot tourists taking photos and pointing and yelling… jesus.
Mountain owl and some… beeeef? Wack photos anyways. Why can’t these animals just stay still! Although I have say, the warm colors looked very nice when shooting from the right angle. The light was hard in the afternoon and gave some problems for capturing moments. Like the next ones.
These are good examples of bad photos. The first one is focused to infinity but it just looks bad. The second one is not in focus at all. Also bad. I’m a bad boy.
A majestic eagle.
Who goes to the zoo to take photos of seagulls?
A couple of roll filling photos to end this trip and a couple of last words. For now I mean.
Well I would say that shooting old film is more than ok, just don’t except it will behave the same way as a new film. Or the same results as with new fresh film. The colours and the grain is not the same. You can compensate with the overexposing technique but other than that I do not have any advise for shooting old film.
As for the 135 mm lens, I have to keep using it to give my thoughts about it. For now I cannot say anything comprehensive, but it does not seem to be too good of a lens. Ok, but not good.
Thanks and sorry!
-S
