Wax crayons and rubbishy pictures
It’s January, a month of cold, wet and grey miserable days.
Occasionally the sun appears for an all to brief moment and then it’s back to the grey.
But amazingly on the 17th; sunshine for almost the whole day!
I decided that this was the day to shoot some of the rolls of expired film that have been sitting in my film box for months, possibly years.
I decided to travel light as although the sun would be out it would also be cold.
The cameras I picked were the Holga 120GN and the Black Slim Devil. Both cameras are mainly made of plastic and both are light and very simple to use – wind on and click.
The films I used were Fuji Astia 100F (expired in 2003) in the Holga and Agfa CT Precisa 100 (expired in 2018) in the BSD. On Saturday evening I posted a tweet of my plans for Sunday morning.

I received lots of lovely replies but with Twitter, as ever, there’s always one person that knows best and who wants to spoil your fun.

I didn’t reply to the shitpile – I don’t know him, I don’t follow him on Twitter and he doesn’t follow me, but I was a tiny bit annoyed so I tweeted his response to me shooting expired film in plastic cameras. Him being a shitpile wasn’t going to spoil my night or my plans on Sunday morning. I switched my phone off and went to bed.
Sunday morning, I turn my phone on and . . . loads of messages and replies telling me to ignore the shitpile and enjoy my day.
So off I went bright and early and had fun with my plastic cameras and expired film. I walked along the River Thames and then into the City.
The Fuji Astia had a magenta tint due to its age and the backing paper also came through on the images but I’m really happy with the results. Here are some of the images.
“Expired film is better than expired ideology” – David S Allen.
All text and images © Michael Sturgess 2020. All Rights Reserved.
London, UK. January 2020.