David Shoots Film

I bought a few rolls of this a while back from the fine folks at FOTO-R3 in Spain, and I shot a roll on our Bay Area (Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, California) vacation in August. I was underwhelmed by the previous roll I had shot, but I really liked how this one turned out. Our friend Cooking Film has used this film quite a bit, with inconsistent results. Given that I can’t find a straight answer out there as to what film this actually is (it is obviously a rebadge film with fake-ass Neopan 400-style branding), it might be a few different films. We’ll see. I’ve ordered up some more rolls so I can have a better look at it. Meanwhile, here are some shots that I find interesting and you probably will not. (Is anyone else here old enough to have sat through a slide show of vacation photos? With actual slides and a slide projector?)

Please, PLEASE add a comment if you have any experience with this film or any background on it. It’s still a mystery, but I’m definitely warming up to it. I really liked the grain in this roll. I think I underexposed by 1-1.5 stops which probably enhances the grain. The development time I took straight out of the Massive Dev Chart, so I’ll play with that some more when I get some more of the film.

RECIPE:

Three rolls (the other two were Tri-X/Arista Premium 400) in a three-roll Paterson daylight tank.

1 minute rinse in 68F water
HC-110 dilution B (1:31) (I used Legacy Pro’s L-110 which is a lot less syrupy but otherwise identical) 7 minutes
1 minute initial agitation (1 inversion/second); 3 inversions per minute afterward
1 minute stop bath
9 minutes (!) fix (fixer’s almost dead, didn’t feel like mixing more up)
1 minute rinse
1 minute Perma-Wash
1 minute final rinse
1 minute PhotoFlo 200
hang to dry 2 hours
try to get NikonScan to work
give up until tomorrow

By the way, and I’m probably repeating myself, but I always drop my film scraps (from when you trim the leader to load the reels) into an inch of fixer in a graduated cylinder while I’m tempering the water and setting everything up. I hit a count-up timer when I do it. I swirl the fixer every 30 seconds. When the scraps are clear, I look at the timer. I fix for double that time. Even fairly exhausted fixer might still work, given enough time.