These days whenever I come across a photo store I check if they have any film stock available, especially some I didn’t use before. In Istanbul I found a store selling these Agfa Vista 200 24+3 which expired 17 years ago. They were cheap enough and for only 2.5 € I could add processing including scanning so I decided to give it a try.
Processing and scanning was done at Karaköy Fotoğrafçı in Istanbul.
Because there were some issues with a few of the scans I had it rescanned by urbanfilmlab in Germany.
Back in the day this was probably also a cheap bread and butter film available at drug stores and such. Today some expired ones can still be found on ebay.com (affiliate link) for varying prices.
The two rolls I bought expired 17 years ago and I have no idea how they have been stored, so I decided to shoot the first (whose scans you see here) as ISO 70 instead of 200. The main reason to buy two was to be able to produce a header picture in the same style as the other parts of the series when back home, yeah, some OCD going on here, I know…
The Istanbul that appeals to me most is the one captured by Ara Güler in the 60s, from the times, before mass tourism, modern shopping malls and ridiculous amounts of traffic conquered the city. This is why I was mostly interested in the areas that have been kept at least somewhat original.
By now I also managed to teach my wife how to focus with a rangefinder camera and unlike our wedding photographer she also understands the concept of a silhouette picture:
Shortly after buying this Agfa Vista 200 film I was a bit skeptical if it was a good idea to actually use it and also have it developed and scanned there. How has the film been stored the last two decades? Will the results be as funky as with the expired Ektar 100? What will the scanning quality be like?
But in the end, I am quite happy with how the pictures came out. It actually fits my idea of what Istanbul looks like very well.
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These are really great! Even by your standards.
I’m not normally impressed by artsy photos shot on film. I expect you could have made similarly interesting images using digital equipment. But these have a unique expressive character common to each image. Well done.
These are fine Bastian! I’m shooting Fuji 160cn, Velvia 50, Provia 400 and other stuff on a trip in a few days. Love that Apoqualia – but your skills are good. So your wedding photographer couldn’t see what a silhoutte was about? Laugh!
Nope, couldn’t…
I sense some mild resentment about those wedding photos 😉 amazing shots on these!
Ah I better not get started there…
Very atmospheric and charming photos! This time the expired film has worked really well.
Of course the film is only one part, the photographer is far more imporant. I like your selection of rather traditional places in Istanbul very much; in my eyes they are much more interesting and beautiful than the “modern” areas which are emphasized by some other photographers. Modern Istanbul seems more or less interchangeable with many other big cities. It’s the “old” Istanbul which shows the special character of this fascinating town.
There will be a few more Film/Istanbul articles over the coming weeks 🙂
I just wanted to let you know this was the tipping point for me to get an M mount camera. so thank you for that!
I am not entirely sure this was my intention 😅
If you don’t already have a bunch of M-mount lenses (like I did) maybe consider also checking out the Contax-G system as well as a Nikon FM2/FM3a,
the latter especially with the Voigtländer SL lenses.
In both cases you can get a very nice camera with a set of three nice lenses for what I paid for an M6 body only…
hey Bastian, thank you kindly for your suggestions! After your comment I considered the contax g system pretty strongly. and ultimately I decided against it, as part of the draw to me was the ability to use modern lenses on a film camera and from what I could tell the G system seems closed off with no new development unfortunately. and I considered the Nikon, however the Voigtlander lenses I absolutely love aren’t available for that mount. I don’t mind getting some additional lenses as the current offerings from cosina are incredible.
Those are the same reasons I got an M-mount camera, so can’t blame you for that 🙂
Wie handhabst du das Merken der Einstellungen. Fotografierst du die Blende mit dem Smartphone, oder schreibst du sie dir auf?
Ich schreib mir das teilweise auf, zumindest für die Fälle, wo es nicht eh eindeutig ist 🙂
Hab da auch eine App für, aber die ist mir ehrlichgesagt zu umständlich zu bedienen.
Für Android gibts “Exif Notes”, das exportiert dir auch gleich Exiftool-Befehle um die Scans “automatisch” mit den Exifdaten zu befüllen. Funktioniert großartig, ist natürlich etwas aufwändig bis man alle Kameras und Objektive hinterlegt hat, aber dann sinds ein paar Sekunden Zusatzaufwand pro Bild.