Shooting Expired Fuji Sensia 100

6 Oct

Speakers’ Corner always attracts a cavalcade of characters to speak and preach their views. *1/1000s 50mm F1.8 Nikon F100.*

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I like to have a good rummage around at my local market stall in order to find interesting and cheap rolls of expired film. It’s a real mixed bag for results and I’ve had some very good purchases and I’ve had some downright disasters. It’s a real luck of the draw. This particular roll of Fuji Sensia 100 was the equivalent of the coin found down the back of the sofa. It has been rolling around in a box in the vendor’s storage unit for quite some time, and without it’s cannister for protection either. Given its slightly sorry state I picked it up for the princely sum of £1, as both of us knew that that it may not yield anything decent.

Volunteers speak to a marshal in the run-up to the 2022 London Marathon. The colours are clearly shifted and the overall image faded due to the film’s long expiry date. However the scene is still clearly visible. *1/200s 50mm F2.8 Nikon F100.*

Waiting for the London Marathon. *1/200s 50mm F2.8 Nikon F100.*

St John’s Ambulance were on hand for any medical emergencies. *1/100s 50mm F2.8 Nikon F100.*

As I didn’t have overly high hopes for this roll, I didn’t attempt to do shoot anything ambitious with it. I simply took it with me in my Nikon F100 for a morning out in London to observe the 2022 London Marathon. I shot the roll at ISO 80 to compensate for its expiry, which again I estimated would have been about twenty years ago. Keeping it lightweight I shot the entire roll with my long standing 50mm F1.8G lens.

The ornamental waterfowl at St James’ Park. *1/200s 50mm F3.2 Nikon F100.*

The marathon happened not long after the Queen passed away. *1/200s 50mm F3.2 Nikon F100.*

Some images like this of the ending stretch of the London Marathon had part of the image with colours very heavily shifted to magenta. *1/250s 50mm F5.0 Nikon F100.*

From a purely technical perspective the results are not great. The film is really showing its age and lack of proper storage. The slides are faded, the colours shifted, and the heavy grain is much greater than you’d expect from ISO 100. And yet the film has still adequately captured the moments I pressed the shutter. Even after all the years of storage abuse it fundamentally still works. Now if I had gone taken this roll on a once-in-a-lifetime trip to some exotic mountain range then yes, I would have been unhappy with the lack of details and warped colours, but for a bit of fun street photography I feel it only really adds to the fun. Even though the things I’ve photographed have time stamps that indicate the period they were captured, it still adds a retro old-timey element that wouldn’t be present if I had shot it on fresh rolls.

Spectators line up along the finishing stretch inside the gates on Spur Road. *1/160s 50mm F5.6 Nikon F100.*

The wheelchair racers rolled in first before the elite male runners. I was quite surprised I actually managed to get a sharp panning shot of one of the racers. *1/125s 50mm F5.6 Nikon F100.*

Long distance running legend Kenenisa Bekele runs through to the finish line. He finished fifth and set a world record for runners forty years or older. *1/400s 50mm F3.5 Nikon F100.*

One trick I have found in the past with heavily expired slide film, is that converting to black and white can make a big difference if the colours are particularly off. I also find that having a lot of grain is less of an issue in monochrome as well, though I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it is because we are so used to seeing historical, grainy images from yesteryear and looking at them in awe for having captured anything at all, all those years ago. The one example I have shown in this blog is of the statue of Achilles in Hyde Park, with the original colour image for comparison.

Upon arriving to London at King Cross. *1/50s 50mm F1.8 Nikon F100.*

The honeycomb roof of London King’s Cross. *1/50s 50mm F1.8 Nikon F100.*

This period was also the peak of the anti-Iranian regime protests in London. *1/500s 50mm F1.8 Nikon F100.*

Even though this was a fun exercise I don’t feel an urgent need to shoot something like this again and again, especially as the development costs for slide film are higher than that of colour negative. Having said that though I do still have a great deal of expired film to shoot, both slide and print. The key thing is not to worry too much about the end result and to simply enjoy the process of shooting, the final images being the hazy memories of an enjoyable day out. Afterall, it is important to enjoy what we do and to not always take things too seriously.