Expired Kodak Gold 200 - Kinetic Toy Camera - Landscapes

As some of you know, I've been working my way through a year long Roll-A-Week project. Essentially, I've been shooting a minimum of one roll of film per week, every week. Occasionally though, I will end up shooting more than one roll of film in a week, and, in those cases I don't always post all of my photos over on the blog dedicated to the Roll-A-Week project. 

Week 23 of 52 happened to be one of those weeks. Since I was shooting a roll of ORWO NP 20 that had been expired nearly 40 years at the time of exposure, I decided to shoot a back up roll of film to be sure I had at least something to show for the week should the ORWO not work out at all. Luckily, the ORWO did produce some images, which left me with these photos to share here on this blog. 

These photos were all taken on a roll of expired Kodak Gold 200 that I ran through a small plastic/toy camera called a Kinetic. Often rebranded as one of the more popularly known toy camera's stamped "Time" or "Sports Illustrated" the Kinetic is a full plastic body/plastic lens camera with an auto fixed focal 50mm  f/1.6. Essentially a toy point and shoot with three pre-set focal distances (the always useful person, group of persons, mountains) this little camera actually turned out some decent results.

 Ater scanning these images I wasn't overly enthused or concerned about going through them. Once I saw that my roll of ORWO NP 20 for the week had turned up some decent images I figured there wasn't really much use in going through this 12 exposure roll of cheap film that I had run through and even cheaper camera. Today though, when I decided that I may as well look and see what I ended up with, I was more than pleasantly surprised with the final images. 

This roll of film has actually been a good reminder to something I've always known but often forget... the cost of your camera, film, supplies, etc., only go so far. Beautiful images can be created by even the cheapest cameras. Like with any trade or hobby, better tools can help you do a better job but are not always necessary. A highly skilled photographer could essentially use a disposable camera and take better images than an amateur with their choice of the most expensive gear. I'm not saying I fall into either of those camps, but I do think it's nice reminder that sometimes you can achieve more with less. To put it simply, as a friend of mine always says, "Only a bad carpenter blames their tools."