As a disclaimer – I can be a bit of a hoarder. I have a tendency to think “I might need this…” and then put something away for later, and this tendency definitely extends to camera equipment and film. From collecting and impulse buying over the years, I now have a camera bag full of expired 35mm film. It’s mostly colour, with quite a few specialist or experimental rolls, like Revolog Kolor (I wrote about it over on Casual Photophile a few years back).
Expired film can be loads of fun – the excitement of not knowing what you’ll get, the spicy colour casts, increased grain – but lately I’ve found myself less inclined to use it. I’ve been enjoying using my Pentax 17, and the larger grain of expired film shows up a lot more on a tiny image. I’m also getting a bit tired of getting a roll of film back and going “ehh… it’s not quite what I wanted”.
I’ve had a roll of Cinestill 800 (bought in 2018 and not stored in a fridge) in my Olympus XA4 for over a year now, and I finally managed to finish it off at a beach outing. Cinestill 800 is a high-speed film stock, designed for capturing a “cinematic” look with increased red sensitivity.
The first outing for this roll was at a Christmas Market in Bristol – ideal for shooting artificial light displays at night, right? I got some good results, but quite a lot of underexposed or weird colour casts, and one flare (above). I’m pretty sure it’s not a light leak, as it’s only on this image.
Various other outings included London, Chew Valley Lake and the park behind my house. Some of these images came out nicely (I like the dreamy colours of the lake photo especially), but some of them had spots (see the London photo) that I assume are from the film degrading.
My final outing with this film was to Layde Bay, a tiny beach just outside of Clevedon. Last week we had gorgeously warm springtime weather, and while I’m off work recovering from surgery, I thought it’d be nice to take a trip to sit on the beach in the sunshine for a day.
While Cinestill 800 was originally marketed to be used mostly at night, these daytime photos are actually my favourite of the roll. The colour shifts at the edges are more pronounced, and lend the beach scenes a dreamy feeling. Clevedon looks almost Mediterranean, with the warm tints and hazy sunshine.
However, I’m finding myself leaning more towards reliable outcomes with my photography these days. Maybe because I get out to shoot less often, so I want to be able to reliably produce images on each outing. Maybe because I want to spend less time tweaking scans on my laptop afterwards – but I think this will likely be my last roll of expired film. I’ll be putting my collection up on eBay and funding the purchase of some fresh new black and white film, as I’m getting the itch to start developing at home again. Watch this space…