My Film Photography Gamble? Shooting 20-Year-Expired 35mm Kodak Film from China… SHOCKING RESULTS!

Описание: Just an amateur photo hobbyist learning to capture light on 35mm film and sharing my journey along the way in analog photography.

0:00 Expired Film Intro
2:10 Placerville Bell Tower
3:52 Robinsons Pharmacy
5:37 Hangman's Tree Historic Spot
6:59 Green Room Placerville
9:35 Bell Tower on 28mm
11:54 El Dorado County Court House
13:07 Final Shot

My Film Photography Gamble, Shooting 20-Year-Expired 35mm Kodak Film from China… SHOCKING RESULTS!

Photographing Old Town Placerville, California on a roll of 20-year-expired Kodak Max 400 Versatility film feels like stepping into a time capsule with another time capsule loaded in the camera. The historic stretch of Main Street, with its Gold Rush–era brick buildings, weathered wooden facades, and uneven sidewalks, already carries a sense of age and memory, and expired film only deepens that mood. Kodak Max 400 was originally designed as a flexible, everyday color negative film with good latitude and forgiving exposure, which makes it a solid candidate for shooting well past its expiration date. Still, after two decades, the film’s sensitivity has inevitably faded, so adding two extra stops of exposure is essential to pull usable detail out of the shadows and keep colors from collapsing into muddy tones. Rating the film at ISO 100 instead of 400 allows the emulsion to gather more light, helping preserve the textures of Placerville’s storefronts, old signage, and iron details that line the street.

Grain becomes more pronounced, especially in the shadows, but it complements the rough character of the town rather than distracting from it. Shooting expired Kodak Max 400 in Old Town Placerville is less about technical perfection and more about embracing unpredictability, letting the film’s age, color shifts, and grain echo the long history of the place itself, and accepting that every frame will carry a little bit of surprise, just like walking through a town that has reinvented itself many times over more than a century.

Exploring film photography again after a 20+ year break, digital photography has become so sterile, sharp, and phony looking with AI and photo editing making images seem over-cooked. Missing the imperfections, grain, and genuine look of light captured on film.

Trying hard to keep 35mm film photography alive by using budget camera gear, posting weekly YouTube videos, developing color and B&W film at home using the JOBO development tank and a DIY closet darkroom.

Developing film using HC110 for B&W and CineStill C-41 for color film development. Negatives are scanned using a PrimeFilm 7250 Plus single frame negative scanner using the native 3600 dpi optical limit. Any dust removal or post image processing to correct exposure or contrast is done using Nikon's NX Studio software. This is as budget basic as most film photographers can get using a $200 film scanner and free editing software.

The Nikon FM is a classic mechanical 35 mm single-lens reflex (SLR) camera introduced by Nippon Kogaku K. K. (now Nikon Corporation) in 1977 as a robust, mid-range camera for advanced amateurs and semi-professional photographers. It was manufactured in Japan from 1977 until 1982, marking a five-year production run before being succeeded by the Nikon FM2. The FM was designed with a strong all-metal body featuring a mechanical focal-plane shutter and manual exposure control, and it could operate completely without batteries except to power its built-in light meter. Its compact, durable construction—using a copper-aluminum alloy chassis—was part of Nikon’s shift toward smaller, rugged SLR bodies that nonetheless maintained the reliability and lens compatibility of Nikon’s professional F-mount system.

The Leica M6 is one of the most iconic 35 mm rangefinder film cameras ever made, blending classic Leica design with practical through-the-lens metering. Leica first introduced the M6 in 1984, with production of the original M6 Classic running until 1998, after which a revised M6 TTL version — featuring improved TTL flash metering and other refinements — was manufactured until 2002. In 2022, Leica Camera AG reintroduced a modernized M6 that retains the aesthetic and core functionality of the vintage models but incorporates updated viewfinder optics and electronics while honoring the original design ethos.

#filmphotography #nikon #nikkor #leica #darkroom #kodak

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