Experiments with Antique Film

The return to using film and the Petri has also meant unpacking a couple boxes of old miscellaneous supplies and sundries from 25 years ago.  Along with some old dry chemicals and several hundred sheets of photographic paper I found 16 rolls of film.  Of these 5 were black and white and had apparently been shot, 6 were some form of B&W of varying ages and ISO and the rest Ektachrome or a C 41 process film. 

I was most intrigued by the 5 exposed rolls…What could they be??  What had I shot and not gotten developed?  They had the package design from the early 90’s, but I know that I had shot some B&W since these must have been shot.  The first business trip to Europe where I took my camera was in 2004.  Why had I not processed these?  What was on them?  I had to know. 

So I paired them up matching film type and processed them.  To my great disappointment, only one had anything on it.  The other four completely blank except for the film type and exposure number markings on the edges of the film.  The one that had something on it – rudimentary images of practice still life from my first apartment.  The camera I likely used for them had malfunctioned but these were shot before the 2004 trip to Europe where the Ricoh still worked.  Why were they all unexposed?  I’m still confused and a little disappointed because I had hoped to talk about what I found on a blog post here.

This leaves me with the unused film.  I know that color film does not age well.  The dyes do strange things.  If you know what to expect, you can have some fun with it.  But with so few rolls and no two the same, there was no point experimenting with one roll to use the knowledge on another.  The black and white was another story.

I had two rolls of Plus X and a roll of Tri X that expired in 2012, all left over from the last time I tried to use the Petri before its recent refurb.  A roll of Tmax 400 from the era of the Europe trip mentioned above and then finally a roll of Tri X and Pan X, both from the mid 90’s.  With confidence rising in using the Petri again I decided last week to experiment with a couple of these rolls.  I started with the most recent film.

On Friday afternoon I loaded up one of the Plus X (36 exp) rolls and wandered around my property looking for things to photograph.  I live on a 14 acre mini farm and through the years I have made quite a few good images just outside my back door.  I haven’t done this for a while and this seemed like a good occasion.  The rule of thumb with old B&W film is to overexpose a stop for every 2 years past expiration date.  Kodak is thought to hold up a little better, but then these rolls were stored in the home office I had finished out in one of the barns when I moved here and was exposed to a wider range of humidity and temperature than if it had been in the house.  I chose to over expose three stops.

On Sunday I loaded up the roll of Tri x (24 exp) and we headed to town and monument circle downtown.   I don’t ever go out with the idea I am shooting “Street” photography.  I tend to think of my city walks broadly as “Urban Environment” which can opportunistically include street, Urban Landscape, Architectural detail and Urbex.  But today I was purposefully shooting street and in Indianapolis, aside from the month of May, the circle is the best place in the city to do street.

Both shoots went well and I thought I might have some keepers on each roll.  It was time to process to find out.  I processed the Plus X Friday evening.  Good looking negatives which gave me confidence when I used the TriX on Saturday.  Left both to hang and dry until Sunday evening when I scanned them. 

It was a little bittersweet after scanning.  I had no idea what to expect.  What I found was grain.  LOTS of grain, much more so in the Tri – X than the Plus – X (to be expected even with fresh film).  In the right context I can see how I might use this effect in the future, planning for the grain in the final image.  In fact it adds to the images around the farm.  On the other hand, I wish I had my compositions from the circle on fresh film or even digital.  The grainy effect is reminiscent of 1930 and 40’s era images, except they didn’t have six attendant wedding parties, Black lives matter prayer events or electric scooters back then.  Interesting effects but the wrong subject matter.   

Have to think about this little bit of learning some.  I have 4 rolls left.  The second roll of Plus X is 10 years, another roll is ~15 years and the last 2, ~25.  Like wine, do I age some film from today to use 10 years from now?  Stuff to ponder.

The images above are from the circle, the slide show below, the farm.