Never been one for shooting expired films on a regular basis, although I had a few under my belt, so to speak. And every time I did it, it was either out of curiosity or as a challenge of some sort. I never shot expired films as a habit, that’s what I want to say, I guess. But sometime when I shoot a really badly aged one, I get unique results: nauseous colour shifting, surreal atmospheres, out of this world like places and people, grain the size of the Brighton beach pebbles, and so forth. It’s a like a psychedelic trip on LSD, if you get my meaning. Useless results they are, but what a glorious f**k up, on each and every frame. And this here is one such example, depicting and placing each catastrophic image in an universe of its own. A multiverse of f**k ups, I cannot say this without some sort of twisted and sick admiration !?
This film here is an AzoColor ACN 100 ASA, this particular roll produced in Romania around 1984. (you may read here about the film-producing industry of Romania, if you really have or want to). ACN stands for Azo Color Negative, a C41 type of obvious 100 ASA. Not a bad film in its days, but not one of those you’ll pick up as a matter of first choice to shoot (if you had such a choice, evidently). Even when it was fresh, the chances were that you could get good images and you could get bad or unusable images, depending on luck and quality control of that particular batch.
Colours are scattered all over the place, with the edges of the negative long gone. A “Bedlam” of colours, as it were; not much of the original regular layers are to be discernible. It required quite a bit of post handling, as the fogged mask was on every frame. The result is a moody, eerie images, which to my surprise, I like.
One could say this is a double exposed frame; I assure you it is not. What those thingies are, beats me. But then again, when you shoot badly expired film, this is the kind of stuff you get.
I could claim these images were shot in such-like manner on purpose, but I would be lying. I could say that I dabble in lomography, but it would be a poor excuse for crappy results. Or I could explain that I knew I am shooting a poxy negative, and I of course fully expected rubbish. But none of these would be true.
Of course such bad results can be had with any long expired films, including known brands, so I would not whip this Romanian one to death. I have had some really acceptable photographs with this type of film, expired as this one. As I said, the multiverse of expired films is at play here. Storage, temp, environment, all these have to be proper, and even then, it’s a gamble that could pay off or not. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not.
These were taken in Italy, end of summer of 2024, with a Nikon F2 and Nikon F3.
For what is worth, I enjoy these for what they are, which is basically a photographic joke, and not a good one at that. But when one puts in rubbish, one could only expect to witness the RIRO effect (rubbish in, rubbish out).