Tales on Film

As you guys seem to enjoy these film guides, here is another one. I already spoke about one of the most common black and white films, the Ilford delta 3200. Today I’ll review the slower brother of this film, the ilford delta 100.

The ilford delta 100 is as all 100 iso films a rather slow film, suitable for pretty well lit situations like daylight or studio lights. It’s a black and white film, with as you can see in the photo on top of this page, a wide range of shades of gray.

Although you have a wide ranges of gray-tones, the photos can still come out pretty contrasty in a situation a bit darker. You can see in all photos that the noise is very small, almost none existent.

As you can see, the film also handles overexposure very well. This is a long exposure for about 10 seconds and the highlights in this photo has still some detail.

Overall I think this film is a widespread easy to find film. But as with most products for the mass, I’m not particularly fond of the film. For me it’s nothing special. I do more like very contrasty and deep blacks in a film. Sadly enough I only get kinda mediocre results with this film, so it’s not my favorite film, but as it is very easy to find in almost any photography store, a lot of people use this film.

I noticed in the search results of this site, that there is a huge interest in the different film types you can find. I’m only reviewing the film I have used till now and keep in mind that these are my personal opinions.

A color film I use a lot in low light situations is the Fuji press 800. It’s another film I’m burning through the last rolls I could get my hands on. This film was also sold as Fuji Superia 800 on 24 exp. It’s basically a high speed film designed for outdoor use in low light. On the internet I find mixed reports of pushing it to a higher iso, I have pushed it in development and found that it indeed depends on the scene.

You can use the film indoors but it gives a bit of a warm tone, as you can see in the picture at the beginning of this post. I don’t really like the warm tones here because most lights indoors are already warmer and when you add more warm light to it, it ends up very fast being orange.

What I however do like about this film is the colors when photographing outside in lower light conditions. It renders skintone quite beautifully and in comparison to Kodak film of higher speed, it doesn’t has any tendency to turn red when used outdoors.

For a high speed color film there is not that much noise, even as you can see in this photo pushed 1 stop in development. Off course it doesn’t have as fine a grain as does the Kodak portra 400, but I find it very acceptable.

Also when pushed 1 stop in development I find the overall colors and saturation work very well in tungsten light. I find that the film does look like, what you see at that moment. For example this picture was taken with only street lights at night around 11pm.

Overexposure is handled quite well by the press 800, you can still see a lot of detail in the areas surrounding the sun. As you also can see in the photo is that the film has a pretty wide latitude and is a good film for beginners to not be too perfect about their light metering.

The film is overall quite saturated, but blues get even an extra touch of saturation, which I do like because it provides a very vivid background when you shoot something with some sky in the background.

Overall the Fuji press/superia 800 is my go to film for high speed situations, because it’s a lot cheaper than the Kodak portra and it has less of a habit to turn yellow. I actually hope that Fuji gets back into making some decent c-41 film and don’t only focus on their slides line, because I personally prefer to shoot with fuji film instead of kodak. That’s off course with one exception for the Kodak Portra 400, but overall I find the colors of fuji a lot more appealing to me.

I noticed in the search results of this site, that there is a huge interest in the different film types you can find. I’m only reviewing the film I have used till now and keep in mind that these are my personal opinions

One of my favorite lower iso films is Efke R 100, it’s fabricated by the Fotokemika factory in Croatia. It’s an older type of emulsion, that was initially produced by the ADOX company. The film contains a lot of silver, which makes for a great lattitude and very broad range of greytones, as you can see in the photo above.

When developing the film, you have to keep in mind, that the film is very curly, because of it’s thin layer. Also because of that layer, the film is very prone to scratching when wet. Next to that I have noticed that the gelatin layer is not always completely dissolved during development. When that’s the case, you’ll find a transparent sticky residue, that’s left after you developed and washed the film. To remove that residue, rinse the film extensively under hot water and use a soft tissue to wipe it of under the water.

There is a lot of detail in every correctly lit photo and because it’s slower speed, it’s also has a very small grain, especially when enlarging. The grain stays very thin and barely noticable. I have enlarged one of these photos up to a 50 x 43 cm print, without any problem.

It is very suitable for pulling the film at least one stop. I have to do some more experiments but this photo was exposed about 1,5 stops below and developed at the normal time in T-max developer. Although everything turns a bit dark, the details stay very clear to see. However the emulsion does not handle overexposure well

Even the cat likes this film, it’s about the only film that she doesn’t run away from. Just joking.

To conclude, I do very much like the 120 variant of Efke R 100, because of it’s big latitude, small grain and incredible detail you can achieve. However I don’t really like developing the film, because it’s scratches very easily. This makes that I do use it a lot, but try to play it safe and take multiple shots of the same subject in case I scratch one of the negatives. I would suggest whenever you use this film, develop it yourself or have it done, by somebody who does developing by hand, because I suspect that when you have a lab develop the film with a machine you will get scratches all over it.

There is one thing I didn’t mention yet, but the film is also cheaper than the equivalents by Kodak or Ilford, because you can buy it directly from Fotoimpex the company that owns the Fotokemika plant.

I noticed in the search results of this site, that there is a huge interest in the different film types you can find. I’m only reviewing the film I have used till now and keep in mind that these are my personal opinions

Everybody knows the b/w film from Ilford and Kodak, but there are some other great manufacturers, like agfa was one day. Although the company is no longer producing some film, there is a replacement for it. A German company Rollei has bought a lot of 35mm of apx and is distributing it under the Rollei retro 100. The 120 is apparently not the same according to the info I found around the internet is a slightly different emulsion, very similar to Agfa APX 100 but not the same. Anyway, for the moment we only use the original Agfa film, so this review is only on the original 35mm agfa apx 100.

The film is a 100 iso black and white film from the early 90′s. It was introduced as an answer to the new films from Kodak and Ilford of that time. It was still using the older technique for the emulsion, which means it’s supposed to be more forgiving but has more grain.

The film is pretty contrasty in natural light situations, but still produces a pretty nice dynamic range

Because of the pretty high dynamic range, you also have a lot of info left in the shadow areas. That makes it a good all round film, from using it in natural light during street photography or like I did in the above photo, you can mix natural light with flash pretty nicely.

Agfa APX 100 handles overexposure very well. On the other hand, as this image shows, the grain is quite pronounced, it’s not ugly, but it’s definitely there.

At the moment this film is my go to low iso black and white film. It is pretty forgiving and with it’s high contrast and great dynamic range, it’s a great all purpose film for black and white. I like it and I don’t leave home without being in one of my cameras and a reserve roll in my bag.

I noticed in the search results of this site, that there is a huge interest in the different film types you can find. I’m only reviewing the film I have used till now and keep in mind that these are my personal opinions

A couple of weeks ago, we got some film to test from Revolog. All different types of film from revolog have a different effect applied during development of the film. How they do it, I don’t know. All film is 200 iso and is most of the time rebranded ferrania film. This also means you can develop the film in standard C-41 checmicals.

The film I review today is the Revolog Lazer film and had it loaded in my Yashica Electro35 GSN. The special thing about this film is that there is a green and/or blue laser-like line showing up on the photos. The lines are random and different in every photo, but also every film is different.

Because of the randomness of the laser lines it can become a bit funny, like in the above film where there is one of my friends crossed out by the lines. But most of the time I don’t think they really add something to the photo.

The lines are a nice gimmick and if you are lucky they can add something to the photo, but most of the time I just find them a bit distracting. This is probably because of my personal taste as a photographer who likes to know what he’s getting before shooting the shot. However I look forward to using some of the other revolog films as they look promising.

More reviews of the 6 other types of revolog will follow in the coming weeks, as we get through all rolls. Stay tuned if you are interested

I noticed in the search results of this site, that there is a huge interest in the different film types you can find. I’m only reviewing the film I have used till now and keep in mind that these are my personal opinions