I shot a roll of expired Ort25c orthochromatic film on my Nikon F3 and was pretty shocked with the results. The photos are amazingly detailed and contrasty. They have almost no dynamic range but that does not matter because of their incredible character. The film gives an almost surreal characteristic to everything I used it on, and it was fantastic for long exposures because of its extremely slow speed of 25 ISO. I took a tripod everywhere with me when I was shooting this roll and it was extremely useful. I shot the roll in several different places; My home, Windsor Ruins, Downtown Jackson MS, etc. I used a Nikon F3 and a cheap 28mm f/2.8 “Ultranar” lens I bought off Ebay. I sent the roll off to The Darkroom with the “Super Scan” option. This film is a great option if you want a more abstract style for your photography. It is not going to fare well in genres like street photography because of its slow speed (you will be better off using Tri-x or Ilford HP500), and since I took very few pictures of people I do not know how it renders skin tones.
I used a variable nd filter on some photos and stopped down the lens to f/11 to try to get even longer exposures. You should also consider that you typically need to overexpose expired films by a stop, so this film’s effective sensitivity is even lower than 25. I do not typically enjoy architectural or landscape photography but using such an interesting film had me engaged in the process and the results speak for themselves. I highly recommend that you try films or techniques outside of your comfort zone, as the reward is far greater than the risk. You can buy the film on Ebay. Tell me what you think in the comments or here.
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