Even though I’m really falling for Portra 400, I have a bunch f film in the fridge that I still need to shoot. So when my team had a fun outing to the County Fair I figured I’d pull out this roll of Kodak Vision 250D. It’s expired, so I think it’s actually Vision 2 stock.
This film is hand-rolled by Mike Raso over at the FPP. He has the canister DX coded at 200 ISO, so i shot it at that rating. I know the general consensus is to slightly over-expose film, especially expired film, and I’ve been doing that fairly often. But I’m finding that I like the saturation and contrast by slightly underexposing, or at least not overexposing.
This roll turned out just a little flat for my tastes. Now maybe it’s because it’s expired, but if anything I liked most of the shots from a roll of expired Fuji 100 that I shot the same day. It was mostly overcast, and mid afternoon, so it wasn’t great light, but this film just didn’t wow me. Here’s two shots compared:
Now that I look at them side by side, the Vision 250D is really not too bad. Here’s a handful of other shots on the roll:
And here’s a handful of shots from the Fuji 100:
The two stocks have a decidedly different look. I don’t think I got the color correction nailed on the Vision 250D for scanning either, and scanning is one major difference.. The Kodak Vision stock lays flat and is a little thicker, while the Fuji curls worse than any other film I’ve used. So I think I’ll give some fresh Vision 3 a try soon. I also have some expired Vision 500T. I have 4 rolls of that vs the single roll of 250D, so I can experiment a bit.
Also, the lens used was the Minolta 28-105mm xi power zoom lens. It did really well with the exception of the rusty Allis photo – I had to switch to manual focus. That might have been the camera as well, but using manual focus with that lens was tough. It was just really difficult to find the focus ring. But I like the lens and will probably use it often.
We enjoyed our team outing, but none of the photos really stood out. It was nice to document the fun, and to try out a few new variables. Plus, I haven’t been to the County Fair in two decades, so it was a nice excuse to enjoy a local tradition.
Aaron Outspoken 