As well as camera and lens reviews I want to include reviews of specific films too, I'm a fan of trying lots of different films which goes against accepted practice of choose ine film and spending forever learning it's ways - I guess I just enjoy trying new and unusual films too much!
In this post I wanted to share a very unusual film supplied by Nik & Trick Photo Services - I should say at this point that whilst I am a huge fan of their work I am not being paid (or by way of cutting out the middle man, given free film) to endorse this product - it's just me sharing my experience using a particular film in the hope that it's of use/interest to someone out there... other films are availble etc etc :)
I shot all of these images on my faithful Olympus OM2n camera :)
The film itself is an ISO 50 film and I think i might have shot these at 25 ISO but I confess these images were shot some time ago and I generally forget my camera settings about 2 seconds after I've taken the shot (I have another blog about a potential solution to this problem) Anyway - as you can see from the images this is a VERY sharp and contrasty film!! This is a combination of the inherent quality of the film, the lens used and development techniques - in this instance (and as per usual) a semi stand process in Rodinal which enhances both contrast and sharpness.
There is zero grain in these images, all lovely and smooth, I love the creamy contrast too, you can see in one or two that the highlights are blown out to white which is another side effect of the developing process although in this case I think it enhances to the images.
The image above is slightly underdeveloped - the shadows are totally black although I don't mind the contrast in the image - i think these were developed at 45mins in Rodinal, next time I'll do 1 hour to give the shadows more chance to develop :)
I think that this one is my fave image from the set - here you can see the increased sharpness and blown highlights which are the trademark of this film and developer combo.
I really like this film, it's a very slow film so it's really only for use in daylight/bright conditions - the high level of sharpness and contrast add real depth and charachter, being a slow film it's slightly limiting in terms of useage so this might be a factor in deciding, but if you're on the look out for something new then I would highly recommend giving this a while - the deep contrast and almost 3D like depth is pretty unique and I love the other worldly effect. I'd be interested to see how a portrait shoot worked with this film so I might try that for a future project
Tags 35mm film, photography, black and white photography, film review