A little portfolio.

Supanova Sydney 2026

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Did my usual thing, rocked up late and got to catch up with some friends. Took a few photos too, but not many. Paid for my ticket and didn’t go inside, I got my money’s worth though.

Actually I’m pretty happy with this crop of photos. I took photos with a total of 4 cosplayers, that’s 2-3 more than I really expected!

SaltedJam – Sydney

I didn’t catch the name of the game that the character is from, but I’m preeeeetty sure the character is Sydney. That’s appropriate har-har.

πŸ‘—: https://www.instagram.com/saltedjam/

Sayoko Kashima – Patchouli

A wild Patchy appeared!

πŸ‘—: https://www.instagram.com/sayoko_kashima/

Yu – Umbrosa

So this is… a character from a Chinese MOBA game, I think? The game is called Honour of Kings and the character seems to be variously called Umbrosa or Shadow, which is probably a localisation difference. I think Umbrosa is cooler so I’m sticking with that.

πŸ‘—: https://www.facebook.com/yu.no.bing

KokoroShimada – Miku

And some film photos to round out the day! This set I’m particularly excited about, even though the results are objectively not that good.

πŸ‘—: https://www.instagram.com/kokoroshimada

Lemme yap about this a little more. This is a roll of Fuji Astia 100 that expired in 2000, so it’s 26 years out-of-date. Given that Astia is a filmstock renowned for having accurate colour reproduction and soft saturation, these are interesting results to say the least.

I’ve since learnt that this is basically expected for expired slide film. When shot at box speed they tend towards a magenta colour cast, and you have to deal with high levels of base fog which (I think) means your black point gets shifted up. That sounds like what I’m seeing here.

In this case I think it’s a happy little accident. The colours are by no means accurate, nor soft, but I like what I’m seeing. It’s nice and saturated, in a way that the colours complement each other nicely on the palette.

Another little win is that the film quality is still very good, too. You can’t see it in the uploaded JPEGs but the details are very crisp, especially in the eyelashes and hair. It helps that the lens is excellent (Pentax 67 105mm f/2.4), and that I actually focused it properly, but the film is definitely pulling its weight and the grain isn’t getting in the way.

One of the unfixable issues with film of this age is the bleed-through of the backing paper. If you look along the left and right edges in the background you’ll see dots and numbers, which are printed on the backing paper for the benefit of older cameras. They have a little red window on the rear so you can see how many photos you’ve taken when you’re winding the film, but it’s unneeded on newer cameras. Over time the film gets “exposed” by ambient light and radiation, which projects the markings onto the film before you’ve even shot any pictures. The best you can really do is photoshop them out afterwards.

I later did a little more research and discovered this approach to dealing with expired slide film, it turns out that you might be able to work around the fogging and magenta colour cast. By overexposing the film and then pulling the development you can basically improve the signal-to-noise ratio of your image, at the expense of some saturation and contrast: https://youtu.be/6hjHXvxicaI

Which is good, because I just went and bought a pile of expired Astia from Yahoo Auctions Japan πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

What’s in the bag today?

Nikon Zf with 35mm f/1.8S (hardly used), 85mm f/1.8S, Pentax 67 II with 105mm f/2.4 and Fuji Astia 100 film. Godox AD300 with AD-S85S softbox

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