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!
