At some point in the hazy past, I bought a lot of expired Kodak Gold 200 (the 200-6 version; I believe the current one is 200-8). I shot some, but four rolls languished as I moved away from color film. When I do shoot color these days, it's usually Ektar. I determined that it was time to burn the last rolls of Gold 200 late this summer, but I knew I needed a plan. Knowing myself reasonably well, I knew I had to pick a single camera and commit to using it only for this film until it (the film, not the camera) was gone. I decided to use my Hexar AF, which I've enjoyed since I got it earlier this year. Its metering seems quite accurate and the lens is very good, so I figured that would help to extract as much as quality as the film had left to offer.
Summer led into fall and the film wasn't gone, but that wasn't a bad thing. More color, more (potentially) interesting results. I took the camera on a mountain bike ride, a few hikes, a few days trips, and a long weekend in Maine. It's a very easy thing to use - autofocus and aperture priority make me lazy - but happily the results justified my selection, in spite of the ever-present feeling that I was cheating somehow. There's no real theme to this photo essay, except perhaps as a loosely organized and incomplete record of the past few months' leisure activities. But looking at the collected scans they felt strangely cohesive, so a photo essay it is.
