Expired - 8 Frames Of Polaroid One Film 200

Today, I'm trying something different.  I shoot a lot of film, and a lot of different brands of film as well.  And to find some of these off-brand films, which aren't made anymore, the only choice is to buy film that is expired.  Sometimes, it was stored properly and it is still in quite good condition for taking pictures.  Other times, age has played upon it and the colors fade or get distorted.  The main problem with this is, I never really know what condition it's in or how it's going to turn out.  What can be done with really old film is to compensate for it by giving it more exposure time when shooting it - actually over compensating it.  In this way, you can give the film a little more "oomph" to let those grains do their thing.

This past Sunday afternoon, September 7th, 2025, I loaded up some Polaroid-branded film, their One Film, which was rated at 200 ASA and had expired way back in 1999.  That's 26 years ago!  I used one of my 35mm SLRs to shoot it with - a Konica Autoreflex TC, that was made in the late 1970s and it's standard 50mm f/1.7 lens - a powerful combination.  I had figured that I was going to shoot the film at 3 stops below what it was rated at, 200 ASA.  That meant I was now going to shoot it 25 ASA to give it that extra exposure length that it probably needed.  I decided to go to a country road thas is about 4 miles from house and shoot the whole roll there - the road being only 7 miles long.  Here are some of those images from the 24-exposure roll of Polaroid One Film:

The first thing you notice is that the film turned out darker than it should have and exhibited some color shift.  I probably could have shot it at 4 or 5 stops below 200 ASA and it would have turned out slightly better.  I have three more rolls of this film, so next time I'll adjust shooting it accordingly.  This is the sign that marks the beginning of the road, Army Navy Store Road.  The road got it's name from Thompson's Army Navy Store that used to be on it 40-some years ago.  It was an Army surplus store and I shopped at it years ago:

 

Here's an old barn that I also shot back over 40 years ago:

 

There is a lot of oil field production in this area and oil wells and tank batteries dot the landscape.  Here was one such oil well site that had old storage tanks, a few pumps and some abandoned oil field vehicles.  Somebody had removed the seats from the trucks and made a bench out of one that was sitting on an old love seat:

 

Along this 7 mile stretch of road, there is not one, but two different little country churches, This one is Lick Creek Church so named because it sits next to Lick Creek.  Go figure:

There are also lots of field where various crops are planted.  Here's a cornfield that's almost ready to harvest:

An underground pipeline marker sign:

 

 

And here is a picture of Army Navy Store Road itself:

 

And here is another tank battery, with it's cryptic lease markings:

 

As you can see, all the pictures turned out about the same.  Dull and with a weird color shift.  Fortunately, I was able to improve them somewhat in Adobe Photoshop.  Here are those same 8 photographs cleaned up and looking more like they looked out in the bright sun while I was taking them:

So, even though the film wasn't in the greatest condition, I was still able to make it work and get useable images from it.  I hope you liked this post!

License To Kill.... Errr, Shoot

To shoot with a spy camera, that is.  You've seen the nifty little spy cameras that James Bond uses in the movies, they are totally cool!  Well, here's some tiny cameras of my own that are pretty small and easily hidden.  And they really work.

This is the first subminiature camera I ever got, a Rollei 16 - you may recognize it:

Yes, it's the same camera that Carl Kolchak used on The Night Stalker.  Although his pictures hardly ever turned out, this camera can take very good images.  It's a well-made piece of solid metal that was manufactured in Germany in the 1960s and has lots of useful features on it.  Here's a photograph I took with it, and even though it's only 16mm, it still takes surprisingly clear photos:

 

My second example is a Minolta-16 II.  It has the clever push/pull action to arm the shutter and advance the film like you've seen James Bond do a hundred times.  It has adjustable apertures and shutter speeds and it's fully manual - it doesn't need batteries to work:

One look at this next image I took with it will convince you that it would, indeed, work well as a spy camera.  If you're needing to photograph top secret documents, you definitely need clarity in your camera:

It's so clear, you can read every label on these spices.

My last example isn't a "spy camera" per se, but it actually came about because of the scarce conditions in Japan just after World War II.  Everything was hard to come by because Japan was recovering from the war and items such as film were scarce and expensive.  So the clever Japanese invented a tiny camera that used tiny amounts of film.  They called it a "Hit" camera.  In Japanese, Hit means "hand."  I suppose because you can hold one of these cameras in your hand.  They're only a little over an inch high:

Needless to say, with a negative only 14mm x 14mm, it doesn't take very clear pictures.  But, they do work.  Here's one I took outside my house when I first got it.  I suspect it can do better than this and I need to try shooting with it some more and find out:

So, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, my spy camera arsenal.  I guess I could search the want ads and see if anybody needs a good, capable spy.  Because I already own some of the equipment I would need.

Those Cheap Old Plastic Cameras

 In my camera collection, there are a few lesser quality cameras that I have found here and there throughout the years.  I guess what attracted people to them in the first place was their "quirky" looks.  Yes, these have designs that are not usually seen in cameras, but you just can't deny that they look interesting in their quirkiness.  Most of these I probably got for a dollar or two, so they weren't worth very much.  And when you use them to take pictures, you find out just why they're not worth much - they don't take very good pictures.

But, nevertheless, these six cameras are part of my collection and I have shot with all six of them.  Marvel at their plastic goodness!  Below each camera is an image taken with that camera:

USC Reflex III

 

 

 Ansco Cadet II

Spartus Rocket

Windsor (Diana Clone)

 Imperial Mark XII Flash

 Bell & Howell BF35

 

 

 

At the very least, you have to say the results are "quaint."

 

Seventeenth Anuual Ten Commandments Post

 

I can't believe it's been almost twenty years and I haven't listed the Ten Commandments themselves, when that's what the movie The Ten Commandments is all about!  So, to rectify this, here they are.  So let it be written, so let it be done.

The Ten Commandments

 

1.  I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

 

2.  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:  Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them:  for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

 

3.  Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.

4.  Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

5.  Honour thy father and thy mother:  that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

6.  Thou shalt not kill.

7.  Thou shalt not commit adultery.

8.  Thou shalt not steal.

9.  Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
 

10.  Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's.

And as an extra bonus, another part of the movie featured the children of Israel observing the first Passover meal.  My church observed it this past Wednesday night, April 5th, 2023, and here is our pastor leading it.  Taken with my little Ansco Disc HR 20 disc camera and black and white film:

So, be sure to not miss the movie this year!

Samsung Film In A Samsung Camera

I had this brilliant idea to shoot some old Samsung Prime Color 400 film in one of my Samsung point and shoot 35mm film cameras. The only problem I could foresee having was that said film was long-expired and you can't adjust the film speed setting on the camera to compensate for this. It can only sense the film speed by reading the DX code on the film cannister and setting the camera's sensor for only that speed. But, I found out that you can "fool" the camera into thinking the film is whatever speed you want to shoot it at by changing the DX code on the film cartridge. So, that's what I did. I made the camera think it was shooting 50 ISO speed film instead of the 400 film it actually was. The expirement was a success and here are a few shots from that roll:

 

Here's when the pictures were taken:

 

Camera:  Samsung Maxima Zoom 105 Ti
Lens:  Samsung SHD Zoom Lens 38-105mm
Film: Samsung Prime Color 400 (expired 05/2013, shot @50 ISO)
Date:  October 31st, 2020
Location:  Norris City, Illinois, U.S.A.

 

And then I developed the film and here's that process:

Developing Chemicals:  Unicolor C-41
Water pre-soak:  1 minute at 102 degrees
Developer:  3 mins. and 30 secs. at 102 degrees
Water rinse:  2 minutes (to keep chemicals clean)
Blix:  6 ½ minutes at 102 degrees
Water rinse:  2 minutes at approx. 102 degrees
Stabilizer:  1 minute at room temperature
Water rinse:  2 minutes
Kodak Photo-Flo 200:  1 minute

Film Box Pinhole Camera

This post goes back in history.  The year was 2010, but it hearkened back to my college years and my first photography class in late 1979.  In an attempt to teach us the concepts of photography, we built our own pinhole cameras out of cardboard and a soda can for the pinhole.  These cameras produced 4"x5" negatives because we used 8"x10" photo paper and cut it down into four equal sizes, which gave us four "negatives" per sheet.  This type of early photography, from the 1820s, was called Calotype photography.  As an example, here is one of those shots I took back in 1979:

It shows the parking lot of Southeastern Illinois College, which is the college I went to.  I chose that subject because you could only load and take one picture at a time and to load and unload the camera, it had to be done in the darkroom - and I used the college's darkroom.  Plus, the original shot was a "negative" image and had to be contact printed to get a positive print.  Fast forward to 2010.

Remembering those early, (for me), pinhole camera days, I thought I'd revisit them and make my own pinhole camera again.  I had read where people were using all sorts of containers to use for their camera bodies and then adapting photographic paper or different sizes of film for their negatives.  Some of the smallest cameras I saw being made were out of matchboxes.  This inspired me to use an empty box of film for my camera body.  When it was finished, this is what it looked like:

But to use it, I had to cut down a piece of 35mm Kodak Tri-X 400 black and white film to shoot in it and then tape up the box so it wouldn't have any light leaks.  For my "shutter," I simply used a piece of tape over the pinhole "lens."  It didn't look so polished, but it did keep the film from the light:

It took me several attempts of shooting before I was able to get a decent image, but one of the earlier images that didn't turn out so good looked like this:

Finally, I was able to get a fairly good image, and it was taken at the Fairfield, Illinois fairground during their Fall Fun Fest days of 2010:

I don't know what that curved group of light blobs were or what caused them, but they were present in all my shots, even when I used a different pinhole piece of aluminum in my final iteration of the camera.  The above shot looked like this taken with another camera, which employed about a 28mm focal length, so I guess my film box pinhole camera had a pinhole about the equivalent of a 28mm lens:

Since I eventually got my pinhole camera to take a picture you could somewhat recognize, I considered it a success.  Now, I'm wanting to build another pinhole camera that uses photographic paper and get back into taking some calotypes.  Stay tuned!

Film Is Alive!

As most of my regular readers here probably know, I've always been heavily into film photography.  So, I'm extremely excited about a new company in Italy getting started up to make film. They are called Film Ferrania and had to find an old building, work with the government there and start everything from square one. But, I think they're almost ready to release the first batch of 35mm, 120, 8mm and 16mm 100 speed color reversal film. For the first release, all the different formats will be in the same emulsion.

I can't wait!

Subliminal Messages

Have I mentioned I like taking pictures on film?  If not, here's a subliminal reminder.

And that long-forgotten and discontinued classic, Kodak Kodachrome, seen here in a tv commercial.