5 frames with Alfo 100 and the Fujifilm Zoom Date 1000 – by Ivan B. Palli

I don’t use a lot of expired film but, once in a while, I may buy some if I find it interesting and at a good price. This was the case with a roll of colour negative Alfo 100 24 exposures. I’d never heard of this brand before and since it wasn’t even ten years past its expiration date (at the time of buying, sometime in 2017) I thought it was worth a try. I finally decided to shoot it last summer (2018) while living for a while in Italy.

After some consideration, the chosen camera to try this film out was the Fujifilm Zoom Date 1000 which has become my favourite compact camera since I bought it in late 2016. I’ve intended to write something about this little point-and-shoot for some time but while I manage a more in-depth review I thought a “5 frames with…” was the way to go.

The Zoom Date 1000 could be considered the dark sister of the much sought after Fujifilm Silvi f2.8 given its smaller wide aperture of f5.8 (going to f10 at the end of the zoom range). One of its redeeming features is that the zoom extends from 28 to 100mm. I guess the Zoom Date 1000 wasn’t the obvious choice for using a slow film like the Alfo 100, especially considering that when I first tried the camera with colour film I got quite disappointing results with a roll of expired Lomography ISO400 rated at 100. In hindsight, that was more due to my over-optimistic expectations about how ‘sunny’ the winter sun in Edinburgh actually is. Unsurprisingly, the negatives came out quite soft due to motion blur. This time, however, the Italian sun proved to be much more amiable to the Alfo 100 and I got very good results. Not only that, but the evening scenes came out great, a bonus since I didn’t expect much from them. These are all straight scans from the lab with nothing done to them except some spot and dust removal. Hope you like them!

For some more of my photographs go to Instagram: @ivan.b.palli and @ivanbpalli.

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