Old Film Cameras and Expired Film.
25th August 2021
Most of the cameras I own are inherited from my Brother and Father. Which has saved me buying them!!! But I haven’t really made much use of them, apart from my Father’s Leica M2 which is my go to film camera.
Recently I thought it made sense to dig these cameras out, one by one, and see if they were any use to me and worth hanging on to.
The first one I have dug out belonged to my Brother and was one of two Olympus cameras that he used regularly before he died in 1999. It’s an Olympus iS-1000. What we would probably refer to these days as a bridge camera and, to my eyes, quite an ugly beast.
I find it to be quite heavy for a bridge camera which will not really inspire me to use it often and that would be my first criticism of it.
The autofocus is a bit hit or miss. It hunts back and forth and then, just when you think it has nailed focus and you commit to taking the shot, it moves the focus point. Particularly when taking landscape photos when infinity focus is important. Close up it seems to be ok which probably explains why my Brother used it mostly for portraits.
Loading a film is a faff. I thought it was a duff camera to begin with as I could not get it to load a film automatically. So I did a search on YouTube and found a video by a Russian guy who had found the same problem. He showed that, if you pushed the film into the camera beyond the marked load line, it would eventually accept and load the film. I don't like that at all!
On the rear of the camera are four buttons around the LCD screen and the one I need, mode, to allow me to go manual, doesn't work no matter how hard I press it. So the camera is stuck in P or automatic mode. I don't like that!
So those four issues had me thinking that I might not go any further than the one film I had managed to load. Incidentally I found that film in my Brother's camera case and it was an Ilford Delta 400 which expired in 1999. So that was going to be interesting in itself. My real concern was how to go about developing the film as it was so old, 22 years in fact! I made contact with Dave Whenham (@elland_in on Twitter) as to the best approach and his suggestion was that I try a semi stand development.
I find in difficult to 'use up' 36 exposures just for the hell of, it having trained myself over the years to make every exposure count so it was interesting trying to find things to shoot so as to get to the end of the film. It took longer than it should! But I got there in the end and, with some apprehension, developed the film.
Actually, it turned out reasonably ok, mostly. There are quite a few totally rubbish shots but I was expecting those as I couldn't override P mode and have full control of the camera. But I have to say that I'm not completely displeased with some of the results some of which you can see below.
The first two images are taken on top of Wolfscote Hill in the Derbyshire Dales
The next image is of Lynn and our dogs, also on top of Wolfscote Hill
Some young sheep near to Minninglow Hill, Derbyshire Dales
And finally, a shot of Lynn at home in our kitchen
Many thanks to Dave Whenham for pointing me in the right direction, it certainly worked although, after I have used up the other roll of expired Ilford film, I think I'm going to go back to my favourite, Ilford HP5+ and not wait for it to go out of date!!!
Regarding the camera, I probably won't be using it very often but I'm not going to get rid of it. Every now and then I shall try it out, probably for portraits shots. We shall see!
Thanks for reading my blog this month, next month I may be trying out another Olympus camera. See you then!
Recently I thought it made sense to dig these cameras out, one by one, and see if they were any use to me and worth hanging on to.
The first one I have dug out belonged to my Brother and was one of two Olympus cameras that he used regularly before he died in 1999. It’s an Olympus iS-1000. What we would probably refer to these days as a bridge camera and, to my eyes, quite an ugly beast.
I find it to be quite heavy for a bridge camera which will not really inspire me to use it often and that would be my first criticism of it.
The autofocus is a bit hit or miss. It hunts back and forth and then, just when you think it has nailed focus and you commit to taking the shot, it moves the focus point. Particularly when taking landscape photos when infinity focus is important. Close up it seems to be ok which probably explains why my Brother used it mostly for portraits.
Loading a film is a faff. I thought it was a duff camera to begin with as I could not get it to load a film automatically. So I did a search on YouTube and found a video by a Russian guy who had found the same problem. He showed that, if you pushed the film into the camera beyond the marked load line, it would eventually accept and load the film. I don't like that at all!
On the rear of the camera are four buttons around the LCD screen and the one I need, mode, to allow me to go manual, doesn't work no matter how hard I press it. So the camera is stuck in P or automatic mode. I don't like that!
So those four issues had me thinking that I might not go any further than the one film I had managed to load. Incidentally I found that film in my Brother's camera case and it was an Ilford Delta 400 which expired in 1999. So that was going to be interesting in itself. My real concern was how to go about developing the film as it was so old, 22 years in fact! I made contact with Dave Whenham (@elland_in on Twitter) as to the best approach and his suggestion was that I try a semi stand development.
I find in difficult to 'use up' 36 exposures just for the hell of, it having trained myself over the years to make every exposure count so it was interesting trying to find things to shoot so as to get to the end of the film. It took longer than it should! But I got there in the end and, with some apprehension, developed the film.
Actually, it turned out reasonably ok, mostly. There are quite a few totally rubbish shots but I was expecting those as I couldn't override P mode and have full control of the camera. But I have to say that I'm not completely displeased with some of the results some of which you can see below.
The first two images are taken on top of Wolfscote Hill in the Derbyshire Dales
The next image is of Lynn and our dogs, also on top of Wolfscote Hill
Some young sheep near to Minninglow Hill, Derbyshire Dales
And finally, a shot of Lynn at home in our kitchen
Many thanks to Dave Whenham for pointing me in the right direction, it certainly worked although, after I have used up the other roll of expired Ilford film, I think I'm going to go back to my favourite, Ilford HP5+ and not wait for it to go out of date!!!
Regarding the camera, I probably won't be using it very often but I'm not going to get rid of it. Every now and then I shall try it out, probably for portraits shots. We shall see!
Thanks for reading my blog this month, next month I may be trying out another Olympus camera. See you then!
Comments
By Gill: Not bad for a well expired film. Nice portrait of Lynn. By David Gibbins: Thank you, Gill!