Mark on one of his last days

Mark has spent a couple of months on an internship in this room where

I am one of the researchers. I took this picture with my Olympus XA

on film of unknown vintage but certainly 25 years, perhaps 35 years

old. It was part of a load of film a friend gave me around

Christmastime when he cleaned out his freezer and cupbards. I think

this film was part of the freezer batch so it was fairly well treated

during its storage. However, it started life with a handicap being a

cheap film. This is probably the best of the dozen or so shots I

took. I cropt away a little of the window and wall at the top.



This picture is on a roll of Zellers brand ASA80 colour print film, a

twenty-exposure length (that dates it somewhat already) in a reusable

cannister. The cannister had a sticky label with the brand and speed

information. My friend told me he thought it was from about 1979 and

I would not be surprised. It certainly predates DX coding. Given my

friend's guess, I decided to over-expose the film by a stop or so, and

I rated it at ISO25; this seemed to be about right for some of it.

Nonetheless, I probably would have had more successes if I had rated

it at ISO10.



There are no clues on the negatives (at least that I can make sense

of) as to what the film was before Zeller's labelled it as their own.

The frame numbers are a small sans-serif font, and at the edge near

the end of the roll are the numbers 297 98 followed by the word

SAFETY. (This suggests it is a machine-cut length, not spooled from

a bulk roll.) Between the sprocket holes on both edges the whole

length of the film are green circles, like large dots.