24 Frames / The Whole Roll of Expired Gold 200 in an Agfamatic 200 – #FullRollFriday – by Rock

As soon as I saw the post by Jeremy Strange on April 3rd, I thought what a great idea – a whole roll of photographs to look at. After all, it is all about seeing other peoples’ work, not just their words but in particular their actual images. And as soon as the challenge was set to share a whole roll, I knew this something I wanted to do.

A quick skim through the folders on my PC (all my negatives are scanned these days) and this appeared to be harder than I first thought: either there were too many mishaps per roll or too many comparable shots per roll. Who wants to see 24 pictures of trees? I really thought my first ‘whole roll’ post would be of a 2015 trip to the Isle of Arran in Scotland. I feel this roll might fit into the second category of images too similar, so maybe save this one for now.

In the end, I have chosen a sort of wild card. I have gone for a whole roll where all the photos have the potential to be mishaps or alike. So here is my whole roll of expired film, long expired film (Kodak Gold 200 dated 1992 to be precise), and even a camera from an expired format i.e  the Agfamatic 200.

Every now and then I like to go lo-fi and will shoot a roll of 126 or 110 cartridge, when I can find some. The results can be slightly unpredictable, although big grain and orange casts are usual features. Here it is then – a whole roll, in number order, shot over a few days in January around my home city of Medway, Kent…

You may have noticed that photos 5 and 6 are the same. I’ve added it twice to make up the full complement of 24 frames (the original frame 5 came out blank) and to highlight the orange colour cast that you often get with film that is well past it’s date.

All the photos here have required some post processing, most notably pulling the RGB white balance towards the cooler, blue end to compensate. I use DxO Optics Pro 8, not the most up to date program but it does the trick for me. For those unfamiliar with the 126 format, it was launched by Kodak in the 1960s. It was squarely aimed at the mass market: simple folk could load the simple cartridges in equally simple cameras. Most brands of camera makers jumped on the bandwagon. There is an awful lot of these out there still; you just have to find the cartridges!

Cheers, Rock (www.rocksreflex.com)

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