Jefferson County, Missouri, is quite different from nearby St. Louis. I think of Jeffco as the "Gateway to the Eastern Ozarks."
Like so much of the country, we have been living through an unprecedented period of extra hot weather.
What do people do here to help get through the heat? Last Sunday I loaded a roll of expired date Fujicolor 200 into a 1950's Argus C-four and went out to find out.
Locations include Rockford Beach and Cedar Hill Park, both on Big River at old mill sites, and St. Martin's Cemetery in High Ridge.
My plan was to develop the film at home in Caffenol chemistry, so I added 2 full stops of exposure to compensate for the age of the film and stretched the time in the developer mix from my usual 7 minutes to 10 minutes because of an experiment I was conducting.
My normal recipe calls for including 5 teaspoons of dry instant coffee crystals mixed into 6 ounces of distilled water. But out of curiosity, instead I made up a small pot of fresh coffee brewed in my electric drip coffee maker at 5 times the strength of recommended coffee from ground.
Would it even work?
Yes, it did!
The ground coffee was no-name from the dollar store
Caffenol renders color films as monochrome, but I like to give the images a final tint of sepia in the final steps of tweaking what I scan from the negative strip.
By the way, I added the strap lugs to this camera myself, drilling holes for fasteners in the ends of the aluminum top cover.

Please click on thumbnails to enlarge. Or better yet, select "slide show" to see your way through a replay of my little day of adventure in Northwest Jefferson County, in the heat.

All images are ©2023 E.J.Kowalski.
Thanks! Ed