First go with Bronica ETRS - 2010 expired film

Keezly · Oct 12, 2022

When given my Bronica I was also given a roll of film that expired in 2010: Portra 160. Being a child, I couldn't wait until the film I had ordered arrived, so I had a go with that film. The results were patchy and I am not sure whether that is totally down to my incompetence with the camera (forgot to put the new battery in, left it on double exposure, forgot to turn the viewfinder to auto, etc, etc). The images I actually thought that I had done well were the worst - these were near the end of the roll. Does the roll deteriorate more in places like the beginning and end of the roll or does it deteriorate the same throughout? Below are some of the images.

Thanks for your help.

Don_ih · Oct 12, 2022

A roll of film, if it deteriorates unevenly, will likely deteriorate more close to the beginning. But a 12-year expired roll of that film should be ok throughout, if it was in its wrapper.
I think you probably did ok. And you were probably wise to use that old roll, first. It's easy to forget to do things properly (especially on a new camera) - through continued use, it becomes habit.

Keezly · Oct 12, 2022

Don Heisz said:
A roll of film, if it deteriorates unevenly, will likely deteriorate more close to the beginning. But a 12-year expired roll of that film should be ok throughout, if it was in its wrapper.
I think you probably did ok. And you were probably wise to use that old roll, first. It's easy to forget to do things properly (especially on a new camera) - through continued use, it becomes habit.

Thank you for your response. In the landscape photos there was a very different colour shift - three other photos that followed on from the two above had a pinky hue. What would cause that? I had it on auto-exposure mode on the AE-II finder which is supposed to be very accurate. Thanks for your help.

Don_ih · Oct 12, 2022

The finder meter is accurate if it is connecting properly with the body - something mine on my ETR does very poorly. I stopped using it because I couldn't trust it.

As for colour shifts, that could be a result of scanning dealing with over- and underexposure. Some colour shift in the film is to be expected with a bit of age, but it should be uniform, especially if the film was still in an air-tight wrapper.

Sirius Glass · Oct 12, 2022

If the film was not stored properly it is a crap shoot with the beginning suffering more.

It was a practice roll to get you familiar with the camera. Now use properly stored film or new film and enjoy the camera.

Keezly · Oct 12, 2022

Don Heisz said:
The finder meter is accurate if it is connecting properly with the body - something mine on my ETR does very poorly. I stopped using it because I couldn't trust it.

As for colour shifts, that could be a result of scanning dealing with over- and underexposure. Some colour shift in the film is to be expected with a bit of age, but it should be uniform, especially if the film was still in an air-tight wrapper.

Yes it was in an airtight wrapper, but no idea where it was stored. I shall see what happens on the next lot of film I shoot. I shall use a light meter and the finder and see how they compare. Thanks for your input.

Keezly · Oct 12, 2022

Sirius Glass said:
If the film was not stored properly it is a crap shoot with the beginning suffering more.

It was a practice roll to get you familiar with the camera. Now use properly stored film or new film and enjoy the camera.

Bought a b&w and a colour film so now I need to decide what to photograph and then compare results. Thanks for your input.

Don_ih · Oct 12, 2022

Keezly said:
Yes it was in an airtight wrapper, but no idea where it was stored. I shall see what happens on the next lot of film I shoot. I shall use a light meter and the finder and see how they compare. Thanks for your input.

When the finder meter fails, it's not in the exposure it comes up with, normally - it's whether or not it correctly gets the camera's shutter to fire at the speed it wants, due to poor electronic connection between the finder and the body.

Being in an airtight wrapper suggests that if the film degraded for whatever reason, it would have degraded uniformly. You can check the uniformity of the film by comparing the unexposed areas between all the frames in the negative strip - they should all be the same.

Keezly · Oct 12, 2022

Don Heisz said:
When the finder meter fails, it's not in the exposure it comes up with, normally - it's whether or not it correctly gets the camera's shutter to fire at the speed it wants, due to poor electronic connection between the finder and the body.

Being in an airtight wrapper suggests that if the film degraded for whatever reason, it would have degraded uniformly. You can check the uniformity of the film by comparing the unexposed areas between all the frames in the negative strip - they should all be the same.

Thank you for the input. Unfortunately, I can't check the negatives as I didn't see the point of paying the cost to get them sent to me as I knew it was just a test run. Obviously, with your input I now do know why it would have been a good idea! I just got the smallest resolution tiff sent to me to minimize the costs of seeing if the roll was even viable and if the camera was working if it was. I have a lot to learn with film! Thanks for the pointer re the finder meter failing.

MattKing · Oct 12, 2022

The result of digitization of a negative may or may not tell you much of anything about the quality of the negative, or the condition of the camera used.
Your negatives may all be absolutely perfect, and you can sometimes still end up with lousy (and more importantly inconsistent) scans that will lead you to incorrect conclusions about the film and/or the camera.
Scanning requires good equipment, good skills and good attention.

Moose22 · Oct 12, 2022

Keezly said:
Thank you for the input. Unfortunately, I can't check the negatives as I didn't see the point of paying the cost to get them sent to me as I knew it was just a test run.

Test runs are the PRECISE time I want to see the negatives.

Had a weird thing happen last year and posted it here. Took pictures of the negatives themselves, not like when I scan, and we discussed based on that. That was helpful.

Don_ih · Oct 12, 2022

I think the results are promising. You have decent photos. You're learning the camera. But you should always have the negatives. If there's a photo you truly like from a roll, having the negative is the absolute best source for making a print - even to bring it to get a truly high-quality scan made. Also, if you have a digital camera, you can fairly easily "scan" the negatives yourself. There are lots of tips for camera scanning negatives online. There's even a snazzy guy named @Huss here who does it all the time with great results.

wiltw · Oct 12, 2022

Keezly said:
Yes it was in an airtight wrapper, but no idea where it was stored. I shall see what happens on the next lot of film I shoot. I shall use a light meter and the finder and see how they compare. Thanks for your input.

One issue that comparing two meters can run into is that the Angle of Acceptance (View) is different, or they bias readings to different areas within their Angle of View, so they read different areas and they result in different readings.
When comparing two meters, point both at a featureless, uniformly illuminated area (wall) and compare the two readings...differences in Angle of View or zone biasing are minimized with a featureless uniformly illuminated target for metering! I can compare a spotmeter with 1 degree angle of view and an averaging meter that sees what the lens sees and their readings are identical, when pointed at a featureless uniformly illuminated wall.

Keezly:
Thank you for the input. Unfortunately, I can't check the negatives as I didn't see the point of paying the cost to get them sent to me as I knew it was just a test run.

An issue with any 'digital' file returned from a film processor is that they can send you exceedingly low resolution views (e.g 2 MegaPixels) that lose a lot of the resolution captured by the film...particularly true when the starting point is a medium format neg!

Keezly · Oct 13, 2022

MattKing said:
The result of digitization of a negative may or may not tell you much of anything about the quality of the negative, or the condition of the camera used.
Your negatives may all be absolutely perfect, and you can sometimes still end up with lousy (and more importantly inconsistent) scans that will lead you to incorrect conclusions about the film and/or the camera.
Scanning requires good equipment, good skills and good attention.

I used a company called Filmdev for the developing. They got good reviews: https://filmdev.co.uk/

Keezly · Oct 13, 2022

Moose22 said:
Test runs are the PRECISE time I want to see the negatives.

Had a weird thing happen last year and posted it here. Took pictures of the negatives themselves, not like when I scan, and we discussed based on that. That was helpful.

I always find out these things after the case, sadly! At least I know for future trials.

Keezly · Oct 13, 2022

Don Heisz said:
I think the results are promising. You have decent photos. You're learning the camera. But you should always have the negatives. If there's a photo you truly like from a roll, having the negative is the absolute best source for making a print - even to bring it to get a truly high-quality scan made. Also, if you have a digital camera, you can fairly easily "scan" the negatives yourself. There are lots of tips for camera scanning negatives online. There's even a snazzy guy named @Huss here who does it all the time with great results.

I had intended to get the negatives back for future rolls, but just didn't realise it was necessary for this sort of test. I had assumed the scan would give me the results of my experiment.

Keezly · Oct 13, 2022

wiltw said:
One issue that comparing two meters can run into is that the Angle of Acceptance (View) is different, or they bias readings to different areas within their Angle of View, so they read different areas and they result in different readings.
When comparing two meters, point both at a featureless, uniformly illuminated area (wall) and compare the two readings...differences in Angle of View or zone biasing are minimized with a featureless uniformly illuminated target for metering! I can compare a spotmeter with 1 degree angle of view and an averaging meter that sees what the lens sees and their readings are identical, when pointed at a featureless uniformly illuminated wall.

An issue with any 'digital' file returned from a film processor is that they can send you exceedingly low resolution views (e.g 2 MegaPixels) that lose a lot of the resolution captured by the film...particularly true when the starting point is a medium format neg!

I had used Filmdev: https://filmdev.co.uk/ for the developing and opted for the small scan in tiff format: Small 1545px x 1024px as I just wanted to get an idea of how wrong I had gone, and I knew that I had gone wrong on most of the frames, though to be honest I thought the teddy bear shots I did would be some of the worst and they were the best (it was in a room with not particularly good light and a darkish day). Thanks for the pointer on how to check the metering.

MattKing · Oct 13, 2022

Keezly said:
I used a company called Filmdev for the developing. They got good reviews: https://filmdev.co.uk/

I think you will find that some times you will get bad scans from people with good reviews, just as some times you will get good scans from people with bad reviews.
It used to be the same situation with labs that would do machine (optical) prints.
Heck, I used to make optical, machine proof prints of (mostly medium format) rolls for professional wedding and portrait and commercial photographers, with every print being supported with a first test, yet every once in a while I too would have a less than perfect day

Keezly · Oct 13, 2022

Here are another two shots from the roll. The landscape shot is third to last on the roll and the last two shots were even worse with a much pinker cast to them. The teddy shots were in the middle of the roll.

MattKing · Oct 13, 2022

You really can't tell much about the film and the exposure from a scan alone unless the result is a good one. The teddy shot looks good, which bodes well for the camera. The landscape might be the result of severe under or, more likely, over-exposure, combined with the scanning software struggling to deal with that, but without a negative to reference, that is a mere wild guess.

Keezly · Oct 13, 2022

MattKing said:
You really can't tell much about the film and the exposure from a scan alone unless the result is a good one. The teddy shot looks good, which bodes well for the camera. The landscape might be the result of severe under or, more likely, over-exposure, combined with the scanning software struggling to deal with that, but without a negative to reference, that is a mere wild guess.

One thing I should have done, and didn't in my enthusiasm, was to make a note of the settings for each shot I took. I shall do that with the next film, and get the negatives, so I have a better idea of where I went wrong, or, hopefully, right.

MattKing · Oct 13, 2022

Keezly said:
One thing I should have done, and didn't in my enthusiasm, was to make a note of the settings for each shot I took. I shall do that with the next film, and get the negatives, so I have a better idea of where I went wrong, or, hopefully, right.

It is probably more useful to note your observations about the character and amount of light, how you took your meter reading, the film speed set on the meter, and whether you followed the reading exactly or modified the settings, and if modified, how.
Something like: "high overcast, reflected reading using the TTl meter in the camera with the nearest trees in the centre 1/3 of the frame, EI of 200 set, +1 stop extra exposure added."
If you want to add the exact shutter speed and f-stop that can be helpful while you are testing, but isn't nearly so important thereafter, except when experimenting with things like motion blur and depth of field.

Keezly · Oct 13, 2022

MattKing said:
It is probably more useful to note your observations about the character and amount of light, how you took your meter reading, the film speed set on the meter, and whether you followed the reading exactly or modified the settings, and if modified, how.
Something like: "high overcast, reflected reading using the TTl meter in the camera with the nearest trees in the centre 1/3 of the frame, EI of 200 set, +1 stop extra exposure added."
If you want to add the exact shutter speed and f-stop that can be helpful while you are testing, but isn't nearly so important thereafter, except when experimenting with things like motion blur and depth of field.

Thank you for the pointers. They are very useful for my future attempts.

abruzzi · Nov 15, 2022

The first roll I shoot on any roll film camera I get is to take the exact same shot with the same exposure, but different shutter aperture combinations, i.e. f2.8/500, f4/250, f5.6/125, f8/60, f11/30, f16/15. This is easiest on a tripod, but doesn’t have to be. When developed, every shot should show the same density on the negative (also, my first test roll is always B&W). This tests that the shutter, even if not accurate, is at least relatively consistent. It also gives a chance to focus on the camera rather than composition. Doing a walk around for the roll, distracts me from the camera since I’m looking for nice shots.

Keezly · Nov 15, 2022

abruzzi said:
The first roll I shoot on any roll film camera I get is to take the exact same shot with the same exposure, but different shutter aperture combinations, i.e. f2.8/500, f4/250, f5.6/125, f8/60, f11/30, f16/15. This is easiest on a tripod, but doesn’t have to be. When developed, every shot should show the same density on the negative (also, my first test roll is always B&W). This tests that the shutter, even if not accurate, is at least relatively consistent. It also gives a chance to focus on the camera rather than composition. Doing a walk around for the roll, distracts me from the camera since I’m looking for nice shots.

That is a good suggestion thank you.

First go with Bronica ETRS - 2010 expired film

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