31 days of Christmas

continuing my somewhat yearly tradition of taking a December-themed photo set, last month saw me brandishing two rolls of expired Kodak Plus X-Pan 125 black and white films in an attempt to photograph the 31 days of December in the year 2016. the attempt wasn't that big of a deal - mostly exercising my patience and diligence in taking on average two photographs a day. the hard work, however, did not pay off. out of the 75 odd shots, i reckon only 7 or 8 shots are exposed properly. this is hardly surprising, given the expired nature of the two rolls. it does break my heart though, that the time, effort, and money spent to take the photographs and getting them developed is completely flushed down the tubes. it is the sad inevitability of playing with expired films. in hindsight, had i known the photos would turn out this ghastly, i'd have experimented with push/pull developing those films. alas, what's exposed and developed is history. i cannot pin it entirely on problems with the camera's light meter. on the contrary, with years of exposure to photography, the red lights should have been apparent to me when the camera tells me to shoot with a shutter speed of 1/60 with an F-stop setting at F/2.8 in a dimly lit room! on ISO125 for that matter! in fact, the last time i used the Canon AE-1, the photographs turned out rather decently for an expired colour film. i doubt that it is the camera's fault, but these X-Pan films did expire sometime in the early 2000's (or was it the late 90's?).

a harsh lesson learned. enough with the expired films in my dry cabinet. the next time i am hit by a wave of film nostalgia, i either toss out RM30 for a fresh roll of film, or weather out the storm and return to my trusted full frame DSLR. but in all honesty, sometimes a little flushing of film nostalgia out of my system is healthy for the photography enthusiast in me. it does help me take my camera out with me everywhere i go - if i ever go out, even. i don't blame the films. the risks were there, i just decided to take my chances and hope that i get some good pictures. next time, we'll take the road well traversed.

Canon AE-1

Kodak Plus X-Pan 125 (Expired)