Expired Film: Agfa Vista 100
Recently I found a bunch of Agfa Vista 100 for sale locally, and at a bargain price, so I snapped it up! After selling a few rolls and throwing some to Mr. Waru (check out our “Cam & Sam” film adventures on youtube), I loaded up my Olympus XA with a roll to give it a jam myself!
I’d previously shot AgfaPhoto Vista Plus 400, so I was expecting that same over-saturated, consumer film look. I didn’t like that film when I shot it so I wasn’t expecting much of this roll. For you film photographers - it’s worth noting though that the more modern 400 speed Vista is not even produced by the same company that these expired Vista 100 rolls were. Without significant research I gather that Agfa at some point became AgfaPhoto, and people claim that the modern Vista 400 is just rebranded Fujifilm stock (it is suspicious that both Fujicolor C200 and AgfaPhoto Vista 200 were discontinued around the same time).
Ramblings aside, these expired rolls were made a long time ago and expired in 2008. I applied the usual rule of 1 stop of extra exposure per decade of expiry, plus the Olympus XA shoots in aperture-priority so I added another stop when I was shooting in the day, to make sure I didn’t underexpose the film. That means I was shooting at ISO 25! Unlike digital, overexposing is better than underexposing, which should be avoided unless you like faded grainy shadows.
I was pleasantly surprised to find the film didn’t have over-saturated colours and the skin tones came out great! I’m glad I saved a few more rolls to shoot myself. I have a few other various types of expired film thanks to Cam, so I’ll be sharing those results soon too!
-Sam
Dev+scan by The Black and White Box
