Nikon FM2 / Lomography F²/400 / 24mm

The day we got lost in Shimokitazawa.

I know everyone loves this neighbourhood and despite how much my contrarian tendencies bubble to the surface whenever I see, hear, go to etc etc anything popular, we did too. The real treat for me was our brief exploration of the suburbs after our brunch in Mixture. We loved the little houses and narrow lanes with no footpaths. It was a beautiful day – full of sunny sunshine with a nip in the air which saves Matty becoming too hot and bothered when he’s working. It was really quite peaceful.

The film is [an entire roll] of Lomography F²/400 which was extremely limited due to it being cut from, and I quote “the last ever Jumbo Roll of original 400 ASA film from some renowned Italian filmmakers.” Lomography then claimed to have let it age for seven years in the Czech Republic which is just stupid. They go on to say that “seven years later, we went back to discover that this fantastic film still produces refined colors with a beautifully unique tone. It’s one-of-a-kind Color Negative with an X-Pro feel.” They also state that this film “gives exciting results also with ISO 200” and recommend storing it in a fridge.

Allow me to translate this marketing waffle for you: It’s Ferrania Solaris 400 that expired 7 years ago. As you’d expect it behaves exactly as such. It needs to be over-exposed but suffers from blown high-lights and doesn’t handle high contrast scenes very well at all as you can see in the shady photos of bicycles. It appears to have lost some latitude. A few of the pitchas are muddy in the shadow areas.

I’ve read a few “reviews” of this film and pretty much all of them have been positive and praised the grain structure. I think grain is a problem as well.

Overall it holds up pretty well though. In future I’ll shoot it one stop over and try to use it for low contrast scenes with lots of sun. I’ve got eight rolls left.

This post was tagged with ‘expired film’.