Minolta X-300 and some very very very old film

Car boot sale in the summer, picked up 4 rolls of Fujifilm ISO 400 with expiry date 2007. All in cannisters so for £1.00 I thought - why not!

Mostly the first 10 exposures have not been good, but on a sunny day last week got these which aren't too bad. Shots on dull days - not so good.

Negs scanned on my old Minolta Scan Dual 111 as TIFFS and then fiddled in Darktable and FastStone.

I'm not good at PP but I think that someone who is could get something better out of your shots.

Here is my quick attempt:

FrancoD said:

I'm not good at PP but I think that someone who is could get something better out of your shots.

Here is my quick attempt:

Click to expand...

Thanks for your efforts. I did have a bit of a fiddle with the noise and other bits but decided to back off. It's a funny old world isn't it. There are loads of articles in camera mags and online about which filters and blah blahs to use in Lightroom or whatever in order to get that 'Film' look, most of which seem to revolve around grain or noise, and on the other hand here we are trying to get a scanned film to look more like a digital shot.. - I mean no unkindness in any way in saying this and yes your efforts do actually look better

You could keep the grain and just reduce the magenta cast but , of course , it depends on what look you like.

I think for a 17 year old film, you did OK. I would like to see the scans before you worked on them. Consumer Fujifilm had some color bias the ISO 400 was grainy,films have gotten better. I would expose at ISO 200. I thought the photos of the canal boats worked well with a bias toward magenta. I work in Photoshop and used the Level's midtone grey dropper on the tow path, drove the color more toward green. I also tried Auto Tone, and Auto Color, which have cleaned up old film scans for me. Also the scan seemed really choppy for a 2.6K x 2.6K image.

These look fine.... have that nice flavor about the color. I like em. I too developed film from 2007 (not for that cheap of a price though), but mine are black and white.

I guessed a bit on the development times ...

Did you develop yourself and if so, how much more time did you add for development? I added from 7 min to 9 min but feel they are just a bit underexposed so will next time try 8 min. Not sure what percentage that is over the 7. What was your experience? jim

rambling robin said:

FrancoD said:

I'm not good at PP but I think that someone who is could get something better out of your shots.

Here is my quick attempt:

Click to expand...

Thanks for your efforts. I did have a bit of a fiddle with the noise and other bits but decided to back off. It's a funny old world isn't it. There are loads of articles in camera mags and online about which filters and blah blahs to use in Lightroom or whatever in order to get that 'Film' look, most of which seem to revolve around grain or noise, and on the other hand here we are trying to get a scanned film to look more like a digital shot.. - I mean no unkindness in any way in saying this and yes your efforts do actually look

Click to expand...

HA!!!!...I for one love the noise. Film all the way. the more digital it becomes or 'perfect', the least I prefer.... jim

rambling robin said:

better

Click to expand...

--
jim lehmann https://jimlehmann.squarespace.com

lmans100 said:

These look fine.... have that nice flavor about the color. I like em. I too developed film from 2007 (not for that cheap of a price though), but mine are black and white.

I guessed a bit on the development times ...

Did you develop yourself and if so, how much more time did you add for development? I added from 7 min to 9 min but feel they are just a bit underexposed so will next time try 8 min. Not sure what percentage that is over the 7. What was your experience? jim

Click to expand...

No, I must admit that developing my own is something I have not done for many years. I no longer have the space sadly . OK it does mean putting up with what you get, but I'm trying different labs once I can afford some more colour film as the one I use at present - though good price and very quick - has returned some with damage to the negs from handling.

Having said that my scanning is also a bit variable - I need to experiment more as I tend to use the same settings as for my normal B&W film.