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grober bertram Aug 26

beach 2km away from #why2025-campsite. all shot with a #smena8m

grober bertram Aug 23

#why2025 #smena8m

/ˈsnæp.ʃɒt/Jul 20

The Crappy Commie Camera Party: The One Where We Redscaled A Film Outside The Dark Bag

It’s the Crappy Commie Camera Party (CCCP) at the moment, and I thought I might have some fun. I was searching for information on expired film when I came across a fascinating article on the Lomography website. It was mostly about creative effects with expired film; souping films and exposing both sides (something I’ve actually just tried for the first time), but one paragraph caught my eye:

“When you’re reversing your film, instead of a darkbag or darkroom, try doing it in the light but canister to canister! I always keep a spare empty canister ready for EBS. I flip the roll of film over and tape it to the tab I left hanging out of my empty canister.

I make the canisters touch felts and sometimes tape them together before winding the film in upside down! It’s a lot more efficient, and you can do this on the go“.

Well, I was hooked. I had just decanted some Lomography ISO100 35mm film into a couple of Rapid canisters to try out a new (to me) camera, a lovely pink Beirette SL 100N, and I had an offcut left over. So I took the remnant of the film, and loaded one end into a reusable 35mm cassette. I then taped the two 35mm cassettes together with electrical tape to get as close seal as possible, wound wound the film from one to another. In the daylight!

My next choice was with which camera should try it with? Well, really that wasn’t much of a choice. It’s the Crappy Commie Camera Party, so it has to be a Soviet-era camera, and as it’s 35mm I thought I should use my favourite: the Lomo Smena 8M. We took the Smena 8M and the daylight redscaled film to Barra, and I used the film on a walk around the beach. The film was developed at the local lab in Aveiro, and home scanned with an Epson v750 Pro flat bed scanner and Epson Scan software.

https://flic.kr/p/2rhpDu7

https://flic.kr/p/2rhpDtR

To my complete surprise, we got images. In fact, for redscale they weren’t half bad. The negatives were as thin as anything I’ve ever seen, and full of leaks where the joined cassettes let some light in. I wasn’t sure if the thin negatives were because of the way the film was redscaled or because the film was somewhat expired and stored poorly. I had exposed the film at ISO 25, but I could probably have gone further. That said, the redscales were great and it was a great entry for the Crappy Commie Camera Party. I’ve posted the whole roll in an album on my Flickr, light leaks and all, if you want to see the rest of the images.

https://flic.kr/p/2rhjbUB

https://flic.kr/p/2rhjbVP

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#CCCP #CrappyCommieCameraParty #Expired #ExpiredFilm #Lomo #MadeInUSSR #Redscale #Smena8M #SovietCamera