[Taken 27 June 2010 | Lomo LC-A | XPro expired slide film]
Yes, this week’s photo was taken by Aaron!
Back in June, I purchased a few rolls of expired film at a garage sale. For 10¢ each, I wasn’t about to pass them up — not when this meant the opportunity to try cross-processing for cheap.
So, I promptly loaded up my Lomo LC-A with roll #1, and took it with me on my trip to Medina with my Mom. Only snapped a few pics of Whipps Ledges, though, as I was more intent on taking photos with my Nikon, instead (which I haven’t uploaded to Flickr yet — I should get on that).
The loaded Lomo came along with me just about everywhere after that: Starbucks, walks, downtown Toledo, the local outdoor malls, Ann Arbor, even our trip to New York City. At one point, I had three film cameras with me at once: my Lomo, loaded with expired slide film; my Pentax mini SLR, loaded with 110 film; and my modified Holga, loaded with black-and-white film and judiciously taped to (hopefully) prevent light leaks.
Of all these cameras, I was least confident that the slide film would come out, having had a bad experience with expired garage-sale film in the past. Turns out I was right — to an extent.
Pro Tip for Lomo LC-A owners: Keep an eye on that red light in your viewfinder. It’s the battery-check LED. If it fails to light up, your Lomo will continue to make shutter noises, and it will advance as usual, but it will not expose film. I had learned this at one point, having once thought my Lomo to be totally hosed, but I obviously didn’t learn the valuable lesson of needing to check the battery regularly.
My battery ran out after nine exposures. Out of 36. And I had no idea until I got the film back.
The good news is that a.) the remainder of the expired slide film is (assumedly) still good for cross-processing! and b.) since I opted to go with process-only, and not get prints, I paid less than $5 total for the nine pictures that did come out.
When I picked up my XPro yesterday, I also dropped off my 110 from the new-to-me Pentax. Those should be ready by Sunday, so I’m very much looking forward to seeing how those come out…
so is the green tent in all the photos do to old film?
That’s part of it. Part of it is because it was slide film processed in chemicals for print film. Together, it makes for funky colors and weird contrast — and that’s *after* I messed around in Photoshop to make it look more “normal.”
so I take it it is hard to find someone who prosesses slide film the right way.guess you need a dark room. the laundry room could doubble as a dark room.
No, I did it that way on purpose. I wanted the funky colors and the increased contrast for artistic effect. I had no interest in getting slides, really.