For today’s Tried and Tested Thursday, I will be talking about shooting rolls of expired Fuji Superia 200 on the Canon EOS 500n.
Another day, another travel throwback. Four years ago this week I went to Gibraltar for four days. It didn’t go to plan as it was raining during my time there, but thankfully the weather slowly got better a couple days before my departure.
A quick lowdown, Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory located at the tip to the Iberian Peninsula; bordering Spain to the north, close to the city of La Línea de la Concepción in the Cadiz province. I had a fun time explaining this to a few people where Gibraltar was. I even wrote a blog post about my upcoming trip over my travel blog.
For my trip I took four rolls of Fuji Superia 200, they expired in 2005 (managed to use three). Plus a few Ilford rolls of FP4 and HP5 in 35mm, also expired. All films were from eBay, which I bought before I went away. The Fuji films came with a small green pouch bag, which I still use to this day bag to carry my rolls in.
Sadly the Fuji Superia 200 discontinued in 2018, alongside Superia 1600 and Natura 1600. C200 would soon be an alternative, replacing the Superia – a consumer film that is reasonably priced, although Fuji prices have gone up in recent times.
With the miserable weather in Gibraltar going full swing, I had to make do with what my plans were for the next few days. On my first night, I went out around the empty streets to do some shooting and exploring, while my Airbnb hosts attended a concert.
The streets weren’t completely pitch black during while out and about to the high street. The street lights were brightly lit as well as other sources of artificial light from shops and signs. Using a 200 ISO film in low light or dark conditions can sometimes be tricky, and using a high ISO film would be the better choice. I chose not to use the camera flash or self timer this time around and rarely do for low light photography. The overall results from the night shots on my first night weren’t too bad, with some coming out blurry.
During the day, I often went around the streets mainly wandering around the town centre and making sure I didn’t get lost on my way back to my Airbnb house. I wanted to cross the border over to Spain at one point, and even considered going to Tangier, located in Northern Morocco by boat. When both those plans fell through, I stayed put in Gibraltar going to the same places again a couple times. I photographed the Spanish influenced architecture mixed with a hint of the English touch, something I found very fascinating, especially the red iconic telephone boxes!!
It wasn’t all doom and gloom, I did manage to go on top of the Rock by tour bus!! It was worth the experience and I would definitely do it again – only if the weather’s nice and sunny, preferably not overcast or cloudy!!
Before heading to the highest point, we went to St. Michael’s Cave, where it was wet inside from the heavy rain a couple days prior. The Cave is also an auditorium with seats and a performance stage, with illuminating lights that change colour. I believe my Airbnb hosts, a married couple, attended a concert there on my first night and returned back home very late.
Of course I took some photos while inside the cave. Not exactly the best, almost similar to the night shots I had taken days before; blurry but good to go nevertheless.
The ‘money shots’ came from The Rock and the monkeys, also known as Barbary macaques. I had the chance to shoot the beach from the top, which is along the Spain-Gibraltar border as well as La Línea from a distance.
The two skyline shots aren’t too bad, despite that particular day being cloudy and grey. I think a higher speed film like 400 ISO would be better to use for this type of photography, probably the Fuji Superia Xtra 400 or even Kodak Ultramax 400. Alternatively a black and white film would have been forgiving due its versatility at any ISO, especially when producing prints in the darkroom as there are opportunities to change the exposure and aperture settings.
In conclusion, I think the Fuji Superia 200 was a hit and miss in Gibraltar overall. I was satisfied with some of the outcome after scanning on the Epson V550, with the colours and tones being strong in some scans. As usual, I didn’t do any editing on Photoshop apart from add the faint watermark in the corner. I don’t think they needed any further altering or tweeking despite a few scans being dull.
Take care and stay safe
Photographic Jannine 
Fuji films are very good. Good work, Jannine!
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Thank you!! 😁😁😁
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