When you’re tied up in shooting film for reviews and a fifty-two roll project, things tend to fall through the cracks. It also doesn’t help that there’s been zero publicity from the folks behind Expired Film Day. Sadly, the reality last year was that expired film day fell as the thing started to fall apart globally. I did remember to shoot a roll of Tri-X last year for Expired film day. But it very nearly passed me by this year. Thankfully the good folks at Burlington Camera were on the job and posted something on their Instagram on the Saturday before the actual day. This gave me a chance to hunt through my film collection for some gems. And I have a bit of expired film lurking around for testing cameras I’m unsure about. I still have the second roll of that expired Tri-X, but I shot that last year. Of course, some relatively fresh (2000 expired) TMax 400, nope, too fresh. A couple of rolls of Panatomic-X, my favourite, but those I’m saving for a video review of the stock later this year. Then I saw it, a yellow and red box, Kodak Verichrome Pan, expired September 1968, that would do. So I loaded it up in my Hasselblad 500c with the Planar 80mm f/2.8 lens and got out before the sun vanished behind the clouds. Now the general guidelines for shooting expired film is one stop of over-exposure per decade. Which for 1968 means five stops. Not bothering to calculate it out perfectly, I set my meter to ASA-25 and then developed normally using FA-1027 for seven minutes. I originally planned to use Ilford Ilfotec HC but then remembered my bottle of FA-1027 which is handy to use for expired film. For those following along with the technical aspects, I’m developing normally, no adjustment or pull at all in development. Because I wanted to see the results, my usual go-to is to pull in development to compensate for the over-exposure.
There was a lot of fog on the images, I’m surprised I did not throw the negatives out, but there was enough of a latent image to make it worthwhile to scan. The results are unique for sure, and I’m happy with them, considering the context in which I shot them. While there was no official event this year, completing them helps do something particular normal.