For my last month of the 2024 Frugal Film Project, I decided to end the year similar to the way that I started it - walking around in the wee hours of the morning in the greater Dayton area - this time shooting the Christmas light displays.

Usually I would shoot Christmas lights in color to take advantage of the rich tones and brilliant colors, but shooting in black & white makes the lights uniform and appear to all be white. I think I really like this look and might do it again in the future.

A steep drop-off in reciprocity failure is a characteristic of the EZ400 (Foma 400) film, which means that for most of these images, exposures were in the 30+ seconds range. Normally that’s not really a problem, but unfortunately for me I picked one of the coldest mornings to get out, with the temperature hovering around 17F degrees with an even colder wind-chill.

Below are some of my favorites from the roll. Click on the first one to expand and scroll through.

As you can see, the EZ400 (Foma 400) has a LOT of halation glow around bright lights, which some may see as a detriment while others may like it. It’s an acquired taste that I have grown to like with this film. I’m assuming that the glow is because there is no anti-halation layer on the back of the film, which helps keep the cost down. I don’t see any color come out of the tank when I do my pre-rinse, so I think my assumption is correct here.

During one of my long exposures, the cold killed the CR123 batteries in the F80 and I had to replace them. Unfortunately for me, when putting the new batteries in and shutting the battery door, the latch on the door snapped off - probably partially due to age, and partially due to the brittle plastic not liking the cold temps. This meant that I had to liberally apply some gaffer tape to hold the door shut. With it being the last month of the challenge, the F80 barely made it to the finish line! It just may be time to retire it to the spare parts bin so that other F80/N80 cameras might live on.

Look for a wrap-up post soon - I’ll cover what I learned, my favorite images from the year-long challenge, and what’s in store for next years Frugal Film Challenge!

Happy Holidays!

Jeremy