hygraingea macrofilma

The images in this post were taken on expired Fujifilm Fujicolor 200, which explains their graininess. I think if I could it eat it, it would feel like aquarium pebbles and taste like some sort of carbonated Muscadine grape juice.

I'm relatively new to shooting film so this scared me a little, but it made it a little easier when I asked, "seriously what could I expect from film that's probably older than me?" It actually made it a lot more relaxing, plus, this film was free, passed down from a family friend.

The camera that this roll of film was loaded into is my Canon A-1, also passed down from a family friend. The trick to using expired film is simple: for every decade after its expiry, overexpose it by one stop. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how long ago this roll expired, so I made a safe assumption of 10 years, setting the camera's ISO to 100.

In 2019, a family friend gifted us a Canon A-1. Up until recently it had been sitting on our bookshelf as an ornamental piece; something only to look at. I had hesitated to try to get it to work again until June, when I finally had the chance to visit a local camera shop (Southeastern Camera). After seeing their vast collection of film cameras and equipment, I asked if they could help me restore my own, and they happily agreed!

"Restore" is a bit of an overstatement because it literally just worked after popping the battery in. One of the staff at the store helped me get acquainted with it which was much easier than I thought.

I rarely fall in love - much less with objects - but soon enough, I found myself wanting to hold it and take a photo any time I had the chance. Its construction is just so solid, and the controls are simple and tactile. The beauty in the design of this camera is second only to the photos it takes through its 50mm f/1.4 prime lens - here are a few from the first roll I shot with it:

A slice of Downtown Raleigh's skyline taken from Boylan Bridge.

Piedmont 78 - the last train to Charlotte for the day - leaving Raleigh Union Station, headed by an EMD F59PH (RNCX 1810 "City Of Greensboro").

A Motrec MC-480 baggage handling vehicle sitting pretty, waiting for the soon-to-arrive Carolinian 79.

Milo!

Of course, the human who hits the shutter is what really matters, and we all have to start somewhere. At the same time, I was also figuring out my own film scanning workflow. As it turns out, a large factor in the quality of my results came down to how I edit the scans - a process made a little simpler by the free and open-source NegPy. You probably noticed inconsistencies with the white balance of some frames, or some weird casts, which I learned to work out as I scanned and edited more frames.

At this point, I feel like I'm confident enough with my editing to post my work. Even with Kodacolor 200 - Kodak's supposedly "budget" offering - colors come out fantastic. The only thing is that the sharpness of the scan is severely limited by my setup, but for now I'm fine with 8MP - it's just about 4K!