Shooting Expired Vista 200 at Taipei Pride

I can clear up for you why someone might like expired film if you are confused. Plain and simple, it’s cheap. Recently expired color film will still produce great results assuming it was properly stored. Black and white film, even improperly stored, can still be used with minimal effects to the photos. More often than not, the B&W film picks up contrast as it ages. The case for decades old expired color film is a bit more of a hard sell. Sometimes, the colors are wild and completely off base. They do not reproduce true to life colors and can vary wildly from frame to frame. But every now and then, you might pick up a roll and the colors are wild but beautiful. In my case, my local shop came into some 20 year old Vista 200 with completely unknown storage history. The film has a new home in the shop refrigerator but I have no clue how long its been sitting in the sun, or some hot and humid warehouse. With the coming event of Taipei Pride, the largest Pride event in Asia, I thought with all the rainbows and intense colors at the parade, why not shoot some expired film to kick up the color another notch. After all, who knows what might come of it?

The day started at Taipei City Hall. The ground was flooded with vendors, social organizations, flags of all countries with overlaid pride colors, people from surrounding countries, and countless rainbows. It was difficult to breathe let alone hear one’s self think. As much as I like photography and crowds, I’m not keen on being a photographer IN a dense crowd. The lack of clear exits, unpredictability of people, and the madness of crowds keeps me at arms length. I’m happy to witness crowds from afar, though this time, I wanted to push myself more out of my comfort zone. Anxiety isn’t a cup I drink from often, but few things get me chugging from that cup like a crowd.

I brought my Petri Color 35, the best camera for most people as I’ve stated in some form or another, and set about to capture some moments of Pride. Enabling myself through the repetition of the phrase, “You’re not close enough,” I quickly found myself in front of the stage for musical performances and political rallies. The speakers were no more than 10 feet from me. And they were loud… way too loud. This was of course entirely my fault and I quickly retreated to the safety of the nearby vendor tents while taking some photos while I made my daring escape. I snapped a quick photo I am content with of an older gentleman in full pride garb chatting with some younger people. It felt like a nice reminder, that any struggle probably has years and years behind it with people who have championed causes long before many of us were born.

I then set about marching with the crowd. At first I made my way to the crowds watching the procession of people holding up signs, but then with some encouragement from friends, I started walking in the parade. I had my camera ready at hand and spotted a few organizers passing out ribbons. Before I finish this thought, I should mention. There are some general rules about shooting expired film. For every ten years, you should overexpose about 1 full stop. This is under the assumption that the film has not been stored properly. If the details of the film’s storage are easy to find, then meter at whatever you feel is appropriate given the storage information. I was shooting this Vista 200 at 50 ISO. Looking at my scans, I could have maybe gotten away with shooting at 25 ISO, but that would have been almost impossible to shoot while moving and I would have needed a faster lens. My Petri maxed at 2.8, and I was brushing up against one of its limitations. The slow shutter speeds were definitely usable had I been standing still, but now that I was trekking alongside the others, they became a bit harder to use.

At this point I was nearing the end of my roll, fully aware that the last few frames were using a slow shutter speed while walking, a fully open aperture, and a zone focus camera. I did not have high hopes that any of my skills would save the last few photos. Unfortunately, being right is not always a good thing. The last few frames were mostly a garbled mess of underexposure, blurriness, and out of focus mush. I was hoping there would be a few keepers. There are two out of this roll I really like, but most will be forgotten to time.

My scans all came back with an intense green cast on almost every single frame. There are also some reddish stars on a few frames. I’m not entirely sure what those are from. I’ve added a couple unedited versions for reference.

It’s hard to say why these abnormalities occurred other than the age of the film. It could have been a scanner error, but that is unlikely. My scans from my lab usually come out great so I have little reason to doubt my local technicians. I fixed the green cast with some color curve manipulation. I learned a super easy fix from, Linus, which helped immensely. Though, if you shoot expired film for the sake of wild colors, these “fixes” may not appeal to you. If you are one of the many of us who harps about film prices, which is totally justified, this may be a nice way of shooting something cheaper while knowing there are ways of recovering some frames. This all comes with some risk of course. There are plenty of videos on Youtube with a photographer’s unusable scans from expired film. So, as a last bit of advice when shooting some long expired film, feel free to take a picture or two with a secondary camera if the moment calls for it. Don’t feel bad if you use your phone. It’s always a good backup.

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