/ˈsnæp.ʃɒt/<p><strong>The Crappy Commie Camera Party: In Costa Nova With Expired Film And The Chaika II Half-frame Camera</strong></p><p>A couple of months ago I picked up a dinky little camera, the Soviet era Chaika II (‘Seagull’). It was made in the Soviet Union, which is ideal for the ongoing Crappy Commie Camera Party (CCCP), and it’s a half-frame camera. I’m really getting into half-frame at the moment, with the Welta Penti II (which itself is fully CCCP compliant), and my favourite half-frame medium format camera, the Bencini Koroll 2.</p><p>Of course, my Seagull was in the ‘Not Passed’ category on the Kamerastore website, with ‘flaws that will affect typical use’ (in this case, ‘fungus on the inner lens elements’), but my test images with Harman Phoenix film came out great — well, as well as might be expected with a 60-odd years old camera — so I thought it might be a good time to try it out with an entry to the Crappy Commie Camera Party. </p><p><a href="https://flic.kr/p/2rbHpU6" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://flic.kr/p/2rbHpU6</a></p><p>We were planning a trip out to Costa Nova, and I already had the Chaika II loaded with some expired (c.2004) Konica VX-100 colour film which I had taken to Barra but not used. Since film, especially colour film, loses light sensitivity over time, expired film, that is well past its sell-by date, needs to be exposed differently to normal film. The ‘rule of thumb’ for shooting expired film is to give it one extra stop of exposure for each decade after the expiry date, so I exposed this ISO 100 film at ISO 25. I used the Camera Meter app to measure the exposure, and left the shutter speed at 1/125s as it was a nice sunny day.</p><p><a href="https://flic.kr/p/2rbHZo1" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://flic.kr/p/2rbHZo1</a></p><p>On our arrival at Costa Nova, we parked the car and took a coffee on the beach. Here I was able to take a few minimalist images of the beach featuring a little bit of sand and a lot of sky. After our coffee, we walked slowly (ambled?) towards the restaurant along the river front. Here I was able to take photographs of the typical striped houses of Costa Nova, and after lunch we stopped at the wonderful ‘deckchair’ sculpture, where I think I took my favourite images of the whole roll. There were still some frames left, so a few days later, on a trip to the lab to get some films developed, I took the Chaika II and used the last of the roll in Carris and Aveiro. </p><p><a href="https://flic.kr/p/2rbHpMx" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://flic.kr/p/2rbHpMx</a></p><p>For a camera that was supposed to be filled with fungus the images with the expired film came out great! Unusually for me, this time there were hardly any light leaks, and the images were clear and quite detailed. Some of the other Chaika II entries for the CCCP that have been posted on BlueSky seemed rather ‘soft’, but there was little sign of that with these images, and I could not have been happier. I’ve posted the whole roll in an <a href="https://www.flickr.com/gp/147583812@N06/88358HToe9" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">album</a> on my Flickr, light leaks and all, if you want to see the rest of the images.</p><p><a href="https://flic.kr/p/2rbHpRW" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://flic.kr/p/2rbHpRW</a></p><p>If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="u-url mention" href="https://keithdevereux.wordpress.com/@keithdevereux.wordpress.com" target="_blank">@keithdevereux.wordpress.com</a>. 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