 Well, the view counts on the Ectochrome Christmas series have gotten progressively worse over the years, so I hear you all loud and clear. It's Ectochrome Christmas 4. Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. As many of you know, it's that time of year again where I commit to shooting nothing but Ectochrome. This year, once again, I've decided to do things a little bit differently. Over the past few months, I've received a lot of expired film in the mail from you the viewers who are probably watching my videos when you're supposed to be working. In the batches of mail, there were some unique variations of Ectochrome that are no longer manufactured, like 64T and 100+. Anyway, for all of this always, I'll need a camera. As you know, I have a lot of film cameras, way too many and you definitely need to get a life, as my girlfriend Monika would say. Long story short, I decided to shoot the TX-1, mostly because Color Positive Film looks really, really cool on the panoramic format. To be honest with you, it's kind of been a while since I've shot anything. About a month. Haven't even loaded a camera or scanned film, starting to wonder if it's early onsite Kodak price hike guilt. One afternoon, I got tipped off about a recently constructed nearby overpass that was set to open the next day. I figured that this might be my only opportunity to get some photos of the new road without getting run over like usual. So I grabbed my X-Pan, loaded some Ectochrome 320T and headed out. Although it expired in March of 2002, I decided to shoot the film at Fox Speed. After talking to Elliot, the legend who donated the 320T, it seemed like it still held up pretty well at 320 ISO. Anyway, the sunset light was pretty cool and I was probably briefly on the evening news. This shot is the best one and I think I shot it at 1.15th of a second, handheld, which is cutting it real close for motion blur. Eventually Monika and I set up the Christmas decorations with no help from our dog who just slept on the couch until his dinner time. You want to smell the shart candle? Can't get a PS5 this year? Well, I have the solution. Cat keyboard. I'm about to record the last video of 2021. Kind of crazy to think. I've been putting out a video every two weeks for the past two or so years. This last video is a Fuji Pro 400H video. You'll probably see it before you see this video. Okay, so I got a care package from somebody in Japan named Sam. He sent me a bunch of film goodies. Like Fuji Pro 400H, FB100C for 4x5 and some Japanese drugstore film too. But probably best of all is he sent us candy from Japan, so we're going to do a taste test. Crunky. Do you know what it means to get drunk? Yes. Like, don't you taste a little bit of like nutty something? Like peanut butter-esque? Yeah. Somebody definitely nutted in there. Oh, yeah. I mean, they put nuts in there. Koala's March. I mean, I'm going to guess it's strawberry gummy. Okay. This feels like crackers. What the f**k did you just call me? There's like almost no flavor days. Yeah. Alright, Matsuya cider. I'm actually pretty excited for this one. Oh my god. Whoa. Is yours like tangy? Yeah. It's like it's carbonated, but it's not. Whoa. That's a piece of candy. That's crazy. My mom used to take us to like this movie rental place and she'd be like, you can pick out one candy and we'd always pick out warheads and the thing with warheads is they were so f**king sour that like you'd eat two, it would hurt to eat more, but you'd eat like six. Oh, yeah. And then next morning you'd look at your tongue and it's completely f**ked up. They're like nukes for your tongue. They have four flavors, but only three fruits on here. The last flavor is poison. Alright, we've got every burger. I have no idea what the flavor, oh, I mean it says bourbon right there. This does not look like the kind of thing that will get you f**ked up. Oh, it's a little kid's game on the inside. Fine. Alright, you can go do that later. It's about the mouth. They're very cute though. They're like crabby patties. They're so cute. I like it. Very flavorful, but very dry too. I feel like I'm in the Sahara Desert right now in my mouth. Chocolate pie and there's squirrels on it. You think this will taste like squirrel meat? Obviously. Oh, flaky. Monica and I decided to open our presents early because she soon would be catching a flight home for the holidays. I should know what it is. Among our gifts, I got a cool film camera t-shirt. It wasn't the cow print assless chap I had specifically asked for, but it was a good gift nonetheless. Oh my God, is this one of the Hot Ones house houses? Fascinating on editing a video right now. It's mostly edited. It just needs a little more work. Tomorrow I'm going up to the Bay Area on official Christmas business. I'm pretty excited about that. I drove Monica to LAX last night. She went home to Virginia. Monica and I opened our presents early, like two days ago. She got me this banjo ukulele, which is a really cool gift. I don't know how to play it though. Anyway, after several days sitting around playing video games, hating myself, and wondering why I even exist, I decided to hit the road up to Northern California. After arriving up North, I soon headed out to meet up with Joey Bali, aka Joey Balin Bali from the Be Positive Shoot Negative podcast. I loaded up some Ektochrome 100X daylight that expired in 1993 because I was intrigued. A specifically daylight balanced Ektochrome? It couldn't be. Turns out I was right. That **** was jacked up beyond saving. The film was thinner than one ply toilet paper and if you weren't careful, you might accidentally poke your finger through. Looking at it, you'd barely be able to tell anything was there. In Lightroom, I cranked the clarity and de-haze sliders to the max and tried to white balance the unbalanceable. Several attempts produced what some might call an image, but the rest were beyond repair. This shot of Joey Balin out with his M6 is probably the best one I got. There isn't really too much to say over this period. Pretty much every day it rained profusely. Baxter was pissed off because he wasn't getting any walks. My X-Pan was pissed off because I kept taking it out in the rain. And I was pissed off because I was rapidly gaining weight with each piece of gooey butter cake that I swallowed whole. One day I was looking through my mom's record collection and I came across one of my favorites, the self-titled Black Sabbath album from 1970. After staring at the album cover for several hours and having a vivid hallucinogenic experience, even though I was completely sober, I came to the realization that it was obviously shot on film. But then I looked even deeper. The skin tones were a nasty yellow color and the foliage was red. That could really only mean one thing, Kodak Ektochrome Infrared, otherwise known as Aerochrome. After some light research, because ain't no one got time for heavy research, I found an article about the photographer Keith McMillan talking about how he froze and then boiled the film to get this evil kind of look. Anyway, the Aerochrome whore inside of me thought it was pretty cool. Well, it was time to meet up with Joey again, this time on a rainy San Francisco afternoon. I'd be shooting with some Ektochrome 64T that expired in 1996. 64 is a pretty low ISO, but I thought that the tungsten balance would be ideal for some foggy conditions. Upon first impressions, I expected the photos to be blue, but not this blue. This was advanced blue. This film stock kind of just made everything look like it was a shot from Blade Runner. Anyway, after crawling through three miles of sewers and air ducts, we finally got into the De Young Museum. As we browsed the artwork, we came across an Edward Hopper original. Needless to say, Joey and I had an emotional reaction to it and cried a little. After vowing to become better people and calling everyone in our lives to tell them we appreciate them, we hit it upstairs. This is definitely my favorite shot from that day. It's so moody and apocalyptic, but maybe San Francisco's always like that. Most days leading up to Christmas were fairly straightforward, it rained, and I pretty much just hung out with my meatball the whole time. Eventually Christmas Eve reared its ugly head and I got super hammered with my mom and my brother. We drank a new concoction this year and it wasn't very strong, so we added some vodka to it and that's the last thing I remember. Christmas Day was great, as per usual. Aside from the throbbing hangover that made me feel like death was imminent. After the Ektochrome 64T, I figured what better time to load some Ektochrome slide duplicating film that expired in 1994. Turns out there is no better time to load this stock or any time at all, but I'm jumping ahead. I saw some samples online and it looked decent. It's very blue. The ISO on this type of film ranges kind of a little bit. I found out that the original ISO on the film that I had was 25, which is pretty low, uncomfortably low. This film stock was used just as the name implies for duplicating slides, so lower ISO means less grain. Unfortunately, my results were grainy as sand in a butt crack. These shots barely had an image at all. I had to pump the clarity and de-haze sliders again to see anything. Most shots were just blank. Turns out 1994 was not a good year for Ektochrome or wine, but I still don't know shit about wine. I have three more rolls of this stuff and it's not looking good. Two rolls are respooled. One expired in 1982, I think, and the other one doesn't have an expiration date. I don't really have high hopes for them. Whoa. Now I know what it's like to be a parent. After some more rain, it was time for Joey and I's third date. And most of you out there are probably pretty familiar with the three date rule. It was time for Joey to whip it on out. That's right, his huge 4x5 camera. I decided to load up some Ektochrome 100+, that expired in August of 2003. Apparently this stuff is daylight balanced and its recommended applications were for catalog and retail photography. Well, instead of taking pictures of my couch and trying to sell it to you, I figured why not take some pictures of some foggy trees. 100 ISO is kind of pushing it for a foggy day and being under tree cover. So I was at about 1 15th of a second handheld most of the time. And if you're like, wow, that's impressive. How did you manage not to move and cause motion blur? I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm pretty good at not moving. I don't move from the couch most days. I actually really like how these photos turned out. The colors were quite nice and the grain and sharpness were still intact. Which doesn't really seem like much to ask for, but apparently it is. I rarely get to shoot foggy conditions, but every time I do, I really like the photos. All's well that ends well, I guess. I packed up all my crap and headed back to LA with my iconic yet lazy food obsessed dog. On my way back down through California, I started to reminisce about all the good times I had with today's sponsor, Squarespace. Squarespace is an all-in-one website-building platform designed to make constructing a website a very simple and straightforward process. Hitting the ground running has never been easier with Squarespace's hundreds of pre-designed templates for your custom touch. Making changes to your selected template is incredibly easy with Squarespace's intuitive user interface. I've used Squarespace to host my photography website for over three years now, and the process has been very effortless. Not only to host my portfolio, but also to set up a contact page, as well as an online shop to sell my prints if I so choose in the future. So what are you waiting for? If you're ready to build a website, you can start a free trial today at squarespace.com slash grainydays. And if you use the code grainydays at checkout, you can get 10% off your first purchase. Right, so that's it. That's the end, I guess. Will I ever shoot expired ectochrome again? I'd really prefer not to. Please don't make me. Two of the five roles that I shot were completely vaporized, which is really disappointing, especially when you know in your head that you shot some amazing light. I don't really think that expired slide film really brings any added sexiness to the table. I guess the one benefit is that you can find it probably for a lot cheaper than you can a fresh roll of ectochrome, which basically costs about a billion dollars nowadays. Expired color positive film is kind of a gamble. It doesn't age like color negative film does. And chances are you won't know that your roll is bad until after you've shot through it and all those shots are already lost to the void. But on a more cheery note, it's 2022 and I'm looking forward to the year ahead. Let's make it a worthwhile one. Kodak.