The Dollar General’s Dishonourable Discharge

There was a time when every camera bag had at least one forgotten roll of film floating around somewhere in one of its pockets. Sometimes it was a “just in case” roll and sometimes evidence of inspiration falling short of ambition. You might have come across a sale at Woolco.

Coming back to film in the 2020s sometimes serves as a reminder that pretty well any large enough retailer that sold film would contract one of the manufacturers to package a private label version. Many would use Fuji’s films, but I’ve seen Agfa and Ferrania too.

It is these ones that seem to linger at the bottom of the bags.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Recently, I put in an order for some new C-41 chemistry in Camera Traders in Victoria. When ordering, I also noticed that they sell random expired mystery rolls of film for a small fee. I decided to purchase four of them.

I could use them to finish out the Eco C-41 chemistry I’ve not been thrilled with and perhaps try a film I haven’t before.

While three of them are familiar (two Kodak Max 400s and one Fujicolour 200), one of them was private label Dollar General 200 (24 plus *3* bonus shots!).

This is where I would start. We don’t have this ubiquitous chain in Canada (Dollarama does that here), and some nice people on Bluesky were not familiar with Dollar General ever having sold film.

On inspection, it was probably Fuji (“Made in Japan” – the numbers on the rebate look like Fuji.) and the punch pattern in the leader made me think 1980s or *maybe* 1990s. The canister was DX-coded. I chose to expose at 80 in case it happened to be fresher than I had thought.

As for the results?

Well, it’s pictures!

In hindsight, I could have benefited from metering at 50 or even 25. To make up for it, I invested the time and activated Silverfast’s multiple exposures mode to see what I could get out of this bottom-of-the-camera-bag find.