A few years ago, I picked up a bulk film roller off of that auction site. I was really excited to start preparing my own custom rolls for daily shooting. In particular, I wanted to be able to make shortie rolls so that I would be more inclined to use my half frame cameras. I love them, but the prospect of having to fire off 72 frames on a single roll is a bit daunting.
To test my system out, I decided to purchase a bulk roll of the absolute cheapest film stock I could find, so I ordered 100 feet of ISO 400 Brand X film. Let's just leave it at that. I shot a roll through one of my cameras and, after developing the roll, was disappointed to see everything was under exposed by just over two stops. Arrgh! It looks like they sent me 100 speed film by mistake, even though the box had a big 400 on it. I was not super thrilled, to say the least. Well, it turns out that one of the images makes a decent abstract composition. Perhaps I can do something with it at some point, like use it as a texture in Photoshop. In the mean time I jacked up the contrast in post production and am thinking about it as an interesting figure/ground study. Yeah, that's it.
None of the other frames on the roll, particularly the portraits, could really be salvaged. Bummer.
The other thing about the film is that it was a dust magnet. Just look at the schmutz on the image below. Ugh. Again, possible future life a layer in a composite image. A bit of a double whammy with this cheapo film stock.
At least it was a short roll. And later, when I exposed a roll at EI of 80, it worked well enough for its intended purpose. Live and learn.
