CalArti

Things have been a bit quiet around here lately. I spent the first week of this month in Chicago, enjoying the urban life. It was great trip. Pam and I staying at the Congress Plaza Hotel, right on Michigan Avenue. Highlights included visits to the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Field Museum, and, of course, The Dark Knight at the Imax.

Since vacations are supposed to be an opportunity to get away from old habits, I decided to bring a film camera. I finally used up the last of my Ilford XP2 Super – which was considerably out of date. I also shot over a dozen rolls of Fuji Neopan 400 and Adox CHM 400 film.

The Adox film is re-badged Ilford HP 5+, and used to be sold through J and C Photo. The expiration date on the box was 7/2008 – so shooting it in the first week of August, 2008, was right on time. Remarkably, aside from the XP2 Super and a couple of rolls of Plus-X, all the film I shot on this trip was fresh. I guess I’m still using up 35mm ISO 400 B&W film.

I shot 15 rolls of film during the trip, and have been slowly working my way through developing them. The film workflow is certainly a lot slower than the digital workflow, especially when you are developing it yourself.

For development, I mixed up one of my last bags of Micrdol-X, which I’ve been using at the 1:3 dilution. The development time for the Adox CHM 400 is easy to remember – 22 minutes at 22C. For the Fuji Neopan, I’ve been working with the 15.5 minutes at 22C.

So far, 12 of the 15 rolls shot have been developed, but only a handful of those have been scanned. Did I mention that the film workflow is pretty slow?

At home, other projects have been keeping me away from blogging. First and foremost, I’m trying hard to re-do this entire website. Really – it’s time for a new look and a structure that makes a little sense. So, I’m trying to hold off on adding to the current site while the new one is in process – so no new images in the Image Stream at this point.

Link: http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/stream/2008/080712/08-0286_tu.htm

Where to go on a hot July afternoon? Find a shady spot, of course. That was my logic last Thursday, when I found myself back in a clearing in the Allegan Forest - off of a barricaded two track, off of some seasonal road, off of 122nd avenue, off of M89. It was a place I’ve never been to before – I need to find more spots like that.

You wouldn’t expect that I’d get tired of shooting dragonflies – it seems to take longer every season, but this week I finally lost the dragonfly vibe. Though the fields were teeming with blue dashers and more than a few skimmers of various sorts, I left the digital camera and the macro rig behind. I wandered back into the clearing with a trusty Pentax LX loaded with Rollei IR 400 film, a couple of zoom lenses, and an R72 filter.

I shot two rolls of the Rollei film – 72 frames, but with bracketing only about 20 different compositions. Digital has really spoiled me – I feel like I’ve wasted an afternoon if I don’t take 200 shots. That is one of the great perils of digital photography - you become your own army of monkeys, pounding at the shutter button. Accidental successes seem to be triumphs, but it’s hard to figure out how you got there and recreate the work. Not to mention that accidnets have no concept behind them.

Well - back to the fields and forest. I found a pearl in the sandy soil, often the case there.

This was my third session with the Rollei film. It was shot with the R72 filter, metered though the lens with the ISO set at 200 (thanks, Ray!) Film was developed in HC110, Dil H (1:66) at 20C for 24 minutes, with very low agitation (gentle agitation every 3 minutes for the first 12, then every 60 seconds.) I like it, but I don’t see it as a replacement for HEI. It’s much too slow with the R72 filter, and I really like using a plain red filter and being able to check and tweak the composition as I’m hitting the shutter button.

Rollei IR 400, with an R72 filter, is also a pretty high contrast film. Despite my attempt at using HC110 as a compensating developer, the film is a tough beast to tame with shadow areas virtually clear on the negative. But, when it comes to B&W shots, contrast is your friend. Not a friend I’ve really come to terms with, but working with this film has been a big boost in helping me understand and work with higher contrast mono shots.

A few months ago I ordered what will no doubt be my last rolls of Kodak High Speed Infrared film. It’s sad to see an old standby pass on, but while online buying film, I decided to pick up a few rolls of Rollei IR400.

I was looking for a film that could produce the same startling infrared affect that the Kodak film delivered. After shooting a couple of test rolls, it seems that the Rollei film is certainly up to that task. Here are a few first impressions of the film, plus tips regarding exposure and development.

Exposure

Without a filter, or with just a #25 red filter, setting the ISO to 400 and metering through the lens worked fine. As with most ISO 400 films, though, I prefer the results at ISO 320 or even 200.

As you’d expect, there is no IR effect when shooting without a filter. And, unlike some other IR films, there is very little IR effect when shooting with a #25 red filter. To get a pronounced IR effect I had to use a Hoya R72 infrared filter.

My first experiments with the IR filter were disappointing. I utilized a 5 stop filter factor, so I metered at ISO 400 with no filter and then increased the exposure by 5 stops – effectively shooting at ISO 12. I bracket up and down a stop, for ISO 24 and 6. Unfortunately, with the R72 filter in place, this still resulted in a grossly underexposed negative.

So the second time around I ramped up the filter factor to 7 - 10 stops – shooting at ISO 3, 1.0, and even 0.5. The shot above was metered at ISO 1.0 and was taken with the R72 filter in place. In bright midday full sun, with the lens at f16, this was a 1 second exposure – pretty darn long and comparale to the digital IR work I’ve been doing. (Just to be perfectly clear for folks trying to wrap their heads around adjusting exposure to compensate for filters – I metered the above shot with the camera set to ISO 400. That gave me a recommended setting of 1/500th of a second. I then clicked the shutter button to increase the exposure by 9 stops to 1 second even.)

The R72 filter was critical for getting the distinct IR effect. The image below compares two shots, one taken at ISO 200 with a #25 Red Filter, and the other with the R72. While Kodak HIE, Ilford SFX, and even the now long defunct Konica IR750 all produced good results with the plain red filter, with the Rollei film the red filter just doesn’t cut it. The technical specifications sheet recommends a deep red filter, but I have not tried that.

Development

Having only shot two rolls of this filme, I processed the first in Rodinal 1:50 and the second in HC110 Dil H (1:66). The roll dipped in Rodinal was grainy – very grainy. The HC110 roll had much more subdued grain, and much better tonal range (of course, that is also a result of the second roll being better exposed.) The successful process with HC110 was 20 minutes and 20C, with agitation one per minute for the first 15 minutes, and every 30 seconds for the last 5 minutes. For the next roll I’ll probably drop the agitation for the first few minutes, and extend the time, in hopes of coaxing out a bit more shadow detail.

Rollei IR400 is the first 35mm film I’ve used that has a water soluble anti-halation / dye layer. While this is generally the rule for 120 and 220 films, I wasn’t expecting it in a 35mm format. As recommended on the Massive Development Chart, I pre-soaked the film for 5 minutes before developing .

In conclusion, I’m really happy with the rest results from this film, and am looking forward to doing more work with it.

Why follow the straight path, when the crooked way beckons? Why contemplate things by daylight, when things hidden and dark can be glimpsed? Why do the easy thing, when something difficult can be under taken?

So go my thoughts these days…

Raking leaves this weekend, I thought it would be fun to take some shots of individual leaves in the pelting wintery snow. I wanted black and white shots, and I wanted a steely, high contrast look. I could have just shot things with a digital camera, converted to mono, and adjusted the contrast. But that would be too easy. I could of just shot the images on standard B&W film. But that would be easy. So instead I decided to shoot the leaves on lithographic film.

Lith film is mean for ultra high contrast images. High contrast means all black, all white, and no shades of gray. For my purposes I wanted pictorial images – the full spectrum of black to white. Up till now my only experience with lithographic film was part of one roll of Kodalith that I shot a year or two ago, and processed as a high contrast, lith film.

For this exercise I shot out the rest of that roll of Kodalith, and then switched over to Kodak Ektagraphic HC Slide film. The latter is reputed to be identical to Kodalith (I’m not entirely sure of that.) It is a ‘slide film” in that its intended purpose is for title slides for old fashioned project slide presentations.

I shot out the remnant of the Kodalith roll on Saturday. I should explain that I when I shoot out only half a roll of film or so, I will often just put the camera in the changing bag, extract and cut off the exposed part of the film, and leave the remaining, unexposed, bits for later. I had done this with the first part of the Kodalith, and so it only took about a dozen shots before the partial roll was used up.

I rated the film and ISO 6, figuring that would result in a well exposed negative. I then developed it in HC110, Dilution G (1:119) at 20 c for 22 minutes, agitating every three minutes. This was just a wild guess on development , and produced a contrasty but scannable negative. The vertical photo at the start of this post is the one decent composition from this roll.

The results weren’ great, but were encouraging. I shot the next roll – this time Kodak Ektagraphic HC – also at ISO 6. This time I went with HC110 at a 1:200 dilution, leaving the time at 22 minutes, with the same agitation scheme.

One problem emerged. The film did not clear and fix properly. Shadow and midtone areas cleared fine, but the most dense areas of the film, the highlights, did not clear well. Emulsion remained in place, and despite a few successive baths in fresh fixer, the film did not clear. I should comment that while the Ektagraphic HC is nominally a slide film, the development directions call for development with D-19 and fixing in standard fixers. So I assume this film is somehow damaged.

No matter. Once the film was dry I dropped it on the light table and took a close look. The unfixed areas were transparent, and seemed to have decent tonality, even if they were a tinted emulsion color and not just oxidized silver. So I stuck them in the scanner. The results are not bad – the second, hoirzonal shot, is from this roll. The highlights – in this case the leaf – were made up with the un-fixed emulsion on the film. Ultimatley the light from the scanner did not care, and while these negatives are surely not archival, I don’t really care either.

I have another 4 or 5 rolls of the Ektagraphic HC in the freezer, and will do some experiments with other developers. Someday – but for now, I think I’m going ot take the easy route, and shoot some regular film, if not digital.

More images can be found in the Image Stream.

Ok – I may be complaining about autumn and winter and the all too short days etcetera… but in reality it’s been quite warm here in SW Michigan. Last year at this time the ground was white with snow, and we had some of the coldest weather of the season. This year things have been unseasonably warm.

So, on the Friday after Thanksgiving I ventured out to the McLinden Nature Trails, camera in tow. It was a gorgeous warm sunny day – more like late September than the end of November.

I had a couple of hidden agendas. For one thing, I had just placed my order for a new digital camera – the 10 megapixel Pentax K10D. With the improved resolution, build in anti-shake device (which turns virtually any lens into an image stabilized lens) this camera will certainly be another nail in film’s coffin.

So – I decided to grab a few rolls of 35mm black and white films - Ilford delta 100, Neopan 400, and my last roll of Plus-X 125 – and go for a bit of a walk. What better time to fully embrace film, and a good session developing it – than while waiting in expectation for the latest digital camera.

That’s one agenda. I also just wanted to get out an do some shooting. None of the projects that I’ve been contemplating seem to be engaging any more, none of the stuff that I just plain have fun doing – shooting bugs and botanical close-ups, for example – are available. Even the fall colors have given way to the just plain bleak and boring Midwestern landscape. So I figured it was a good time to just get a camera in my hands, and shoot on impulse – what better way to blow off a November funk.

And lastly – the most hidden agenda of all – I harbored hopes that maybe, just perhaps, there would be one hardy meadowhawk or late Mourning Cloak still out and about, offering the chance for one last session of insect photography.

Well, the tick frost in the shaded areas – even in mid afternoon – quickly dashed those hopes. Yes – it was has been unseasonably warm, but it still get cold at night. And aside from a few small gnats and mosquitoes, there were no bugs to be found.

I turned my attention to trees, hoping to capture some of the stark ‘Novemberness’ of them. Trees are always around, so more remarkable than others.

I brought a light kit with me to the park. I had picked McLinden because this weekend was the middle of firearms deer hunting season – and my usual haunts are open hunting areas. And while McLindon is technically a city park, even there the dull thuds of hunting rifles drifted through the trees – maybe people hunting in the park, maybe on adjoining land.

I took a light kit – actually, I thought I took the Pentax Mz-S, FA 20-35 zoom, and FA 28-70 zoom. But I mistakenly grabbed the F 17-28 fisheye zoom instead of the 28-70 (they are about the same size) and so my focal length options were wide, and wider.

I don’ think anything notable came out of this November ramble. I had wanted to shoot the fallen tree for a while, and I was glad to have the chance to work with it. As the afternoon wore on, and as I looped around the trail to find the sun shining in my eyes, I became more interested in the play of the sunlight on the leaves, the grass, and water in the small stream that runs through the park.

So I spent more time trying just to capture the feel of light in the local, with less and less regard for the subject matter itself. Somehow, being liberated from the subject matter is a compelling and ongoing photographic project unto itself.

So I particularly like the sunlight glimmering on the leaves scatted on the path in the park. Leaves on the ground are at least a minimalist subject, and any dynamic in the photo comes from just light itself.

I've mentioned Harry Callahan in a few recent posts. My first exposure to his work was in the form of a Hallmark Calendar for 1967, simply labelled "Photographs By Harry Callahan." The photo for November is "Chicago, 1950" and the subject is simply leaves on the ground.

Seeing this photo was a marvelous experience for me - it's a great image, but more than that it is a radical image. It works, but has none of the mechanisms that make a photo work. If it was posted on Photo Blink or Photo Critique.Net, Photo.net, or any of the other myriad internet photo sites - it would be ignored, laughed at, or 'critiqued' to conform to the commerci-pop standards that reigne. Seeing that photo was a wake up call for me - and it weighed heavily on my mind as I was out shooting on this November walk.

On a technical note – the Delta 100 and Plus-X were developed in Rodinol 1:50, the Neopan in Microcol-X, 1:3.

The full set of photos can be found in the Image Stream.

A few weeks ago, while in the local camera shop, I indulged myself and picked up a couple of rolls of Kodak HIE – High Speed Infrared film. This is a wonder film that is truly unique. I shot both rolls last Friday – preliminary results are not that promising – but working with for the first time in several months made me think a little about some of the characteristics that set this film apart.

Of course – there’s the obvious. It’s an infrared film. Not just a near infrared film, like most of the others that competed for this niche – it’s a true infrared film with sensitivity all the way out to 900 nm. This is one of the few films that can be used with a true infrared filter – like a Hoya RM 90 – to produce images purely from invisible light. (That is – light outside of the visible spectrum.)

But the other interesting feature of this film is the lack of an anti-halation layer. The anti-halation layer in film prevents light from passing through the film and then reflecting back into it from the rear. It also prevents the film from ‘light piping’ – that is, acting like an optical fiber cable and transmitting light along the film.

The lack of the anti-halation layer introduced the nice gauzy highlights seen in the film. It also is partially responsible for the handling issues associated with this film.

Here are just a few random and rambling thoughts on Kodak HIE:

• Handling issues: Kodak advises that this film be handled in total darkness. They always put the words total darkness in italics, so you know they mean it. The truth is that this film really does have to be handled in – you guessed it – total darkness.

Some time ago I took a photography class, and it was asserted there that the total darkness requirement was due to the ability of infrared light to penetrated the felt light seal on a 35mm canister. This may well be the case – but I suspect the handling issues really arise out of the lack of the anti-halation layer.

Due to the lack of the anti-halation layer, HIE will “pipe light” – and any light that hits the leader of the film gets pumped back into the film canister, ruining many frames is not the entire roll.

This film is very sensitive to exposure – I’ve tried loading film in a makeshift changing bag consisting of a black T-shirt under a mid weight jacket in the back shaded back area of my car – and have still lost several frames at the start of the roll due to exposure. Try loading a roll in direct sunlight, and it may well be completely ruined.

The light piping effect is not limited to loading the film. I once accidentally flipped the camera to Bulb setting, and managed to get the cable release stuck while taking the photo. The result was a many seconds long exposure that not only blackened the frame I was shooting, but more or less ruined the entire roll as the light ran along the film into both the exposed and unexposed portions of the film.

On the flip side – I’ve never had any problem with fogging when unloading 35mm canisters. Yes – I usually do unload under a jacket or some other sort of makeshift changing bag, but my experience has been that the sensitivity is just not as great. Again – this is probably because the handling issues arise out of the ‘light piping’ effect, and not so much because the IR light is penetrating the film canister.

• Exposure: Exposing infrared is always tricky. The camera meter is sensitive to visible light, not IR. If you are using a filler – like a #25 red filter – you may find that your camera’s meter is more or less sensitive to red light than other colors. In addition, IR light is highly directional – I’ve learned from shooting digital IR that just a 90 degree rotation of the camera can have a big impact on how much IR light hits the sensor. Since you can’t see the IR light – it’s had to predict how this effect will play out.

Personally, I’ve opted for using one camera (a Pentax ME Super) for all my IR work. Through trial and error I’ve been able to get a handle on exposure issues with Kodak HEI. With this camera, and with a #25 red filter, I set the ISO to 100 and am usually in the ball park in terms of exposure.

I also follow Kodak’s advice and bracket widely – 2 stops in both directions. Nine times out of then, the frame shot at ISO 100 is the right one.

• Filters: Without a filter, HEI is more or less like any other B&W film, except for finicky handling issues and lots and lots of grain. I usually use a #25 red filter with this film. A few years ago I experimented with using a Hoya RM 90 with this film, but in comparison shots I could not see a significant difference in the images taken with the #25 red filter, and the RM 90. So I’ve stuck with the red filter – its a lot easier to be able to see through the finder, and the exposure times are a lot shorter.

• Developers: I’ve developed HIE in Rodinal, HC110, D76 (1+1), and D19, all with good results. My current favorite is Rodinal, 1:50, for 15 minutes. (This is 3 minutes longer than the normal recommendation of 12 minutes, but I also agitate only once per minute.) D19 can produce wonderfully crisp high contrast images with HEI – but it’s not a developer that I usually have on hand.

This film is extremely grainy – IMO, a developer like Rodinal that brings out the grain with brilliant clarity adds to the effect.

• Storage and Expiration: Unlike many B&W films that can be used years beyond their expiration date with only minor degradation if stored in a freezer or refrigerator, HIE really does lose its sensitivity to infrared light once it goes stale. That said, I’ve used it a few months beyond expiration with no problems. But, a couple of years ago when I inherited several rolls of B&W film that were several years out of date (but stored in a refrigerator) the HIE was the only one that was unusable. The Tri-X, Plus-X, and even Panatomic-X were all fine.

Those are the only hints and tips I can offer about Kodak High Speed Infrared. Unanswered questions remain – like why is it called Kodak HIE and not HSI? And the big question – how long will it remain available?

Sadly, in the last few years many other fine IR films have bit the dust – Konica IR 750 and Ilford SFX to name two. We can only hope that HIE will survive for a while.

Last weekend my wife and I stopped by the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Big Rapids, Michigan. We were on our way back from a family wedding in Traverse City and made the side trip to the town she grew up in.

While I took a digital camera and zoom lens along on the trip, a part of me yearned for the simplicity of a basic film SLR with a standard 50mm lens. So I also took along the Pentax LX and SMC-A 50mm f1.4 lens. No zoom, no auto focus, no program modes (except aperture priority.) I also brought a few rolls of Neopan 400 B&W film.

After the recent experience with the Pz-1p – where the camera was pulled out of moth balls only to find it had developed a sticky shutter from disuse – it seemed like a good idea to give an occasional workout to the cameras I like and want to keep using. So – the venerable LX was pulled out of mothballs, and I was happy to enjoy the exceptionally big and bright view finder (what happened to view finders in modern cameras?)

So – on to Mount Carmel. This is the Catholic Cemetery in Big Rapids, and many of my wife’s Irish ancestors are buried under a huge Maple tree near the front of the cemetery. It’s really a treat to see a tree this size. The many branches that spiral out of the main trunk are held together with a cable that wraps around the tree.

The light was flat that day – it was cool with a dreary overcast sky. I pushed the Neopan 400 to ISO 800, processing it in Microdol-X diluted 1:3. The push gives the film a higher contrast than usual, but the images still look flat to me.

I opted to give the exposures that ‘old fashioned’ look with some simple PhotoShop adjustments followed by conversion to the purple based tritone I’ve been using for most of my B&W scans. It’s interesting – not great, but it gives the photo a little more character than it would of had without the affectation.

Behind the cemetery was a scrubby woods. Being that far north there are lots of birches growing wild in the woods, and more on a whim than anything else I snapped a few shots of the birches and other trees. Applying a few Photoshop manipulations made this image pop. It’s not conventional and doesn’t do well at internet size – but the myriad highlights off the scrubby leaves, and the broken birch trunks have something compelling about them.

As I’ve noted before – Midwestern landscape photography is more about finding that little niche of space and time where things come together and create some sort of atmosphere. I’m not sure is Scrubby Birches really gets there or not – it will take a big print to really determine the potential (something I haven’t done yet). But it speaks to me.

It funny that when I started out in photography, my goal was to take photos like the ones I’d see in magazines or advertisements. And maybe I managed to get a few of those. But increasingly, if a photo I take looks like something I’ve seen elsewhere, I find it uninteresting and don’t feel that it’s a success.

Last weekend I finished developing the film from my recent Chicago trip. I posted on this trip a few days ago, at which time I had developed 4 of the eight rolls of film shot during this two day exercise in urban street photography.

As luck would have it, those first four rolls were clearly the strongest of the shoot. The four remaining rolls were more or less just shots of details from the hotel room, a bunch of way mis-exposed images (not sure what I was doing with those) and a handful of images from the actual street.

Is it a sad state of affairs when a photo of a doorknob is the best you have to offer? If you define the value of a photo based on the content of the subject matter, what good is a picture of a doorknob (no offence to the folks who put together home improvement catalogs.) But judging a photo by the content of its subject is the most superficial of all assessments (and the most widely applied, sadly.) So – here’s a doorknob. Nice hotel room. I was sitting on the commode when I took the shot. It’s the only shot in this lot that I took the time to tone.

And then there was the closet in the hotel room. It was a great full sized closet, and like the rest of the room it had a ceiling way up high – 10 or 11 feet minimum. And there was shelf over my head (and I’m just over 6 feet tall.)

Most intriguing was the light. When I opened the door it was on. And every time I opened the door again it was on. At first I thought that the light was continuously on, and figured that at night the ghostly outline of the doorframe would haunt the room.

Well, I got more Jethro Bodine than Albert Einstein in me – as it turned out the light was hooked up to a button in the doorframe, and like your home refrigerator turned off when the door was closed. But still, that top shelf made a nice place to line up exposed canisters of film, and so at the end of the first full day there I snapped a shot of the four rolls of film exposed thus far.

I had to hold the camera over my head, and obviously could not see what I was shooting except in the mind’s eye.

I think some of those shots could have been the strongest of the series – but an unhappy accident during development ruined things.

I always develop one roll per tank, and I use the ‘double’ sized tanks (that can hand two rolls of 35mm film.), I also always use 600 ml of developer solution. Since a 36 exposure roll of 35mm film has the same surface area as a roll of 120 film (more or less) I reckon this leads to more consistent of results.

Unfortunately, I lost one of the little clips that holds the film spool in place. I used to just put an empty spool in the tank to make sure the spool with film on it didn’t slide out of the developer solution, but I got lazy and stopped doing that, and developed dozens of rolls with the spool unrestrained with no prblems.

Until now...

This particular roll of film slid on the center tube that runs down the middle of the plastic developer tank, and wound up at the top of tank – right where the developer and air space interface. The result was hard agitation marks in the center part of the roll.

I try to imagine how the developer could make those sprocket marks on the film – and I can ‘t figure it out. After all, the sprockets of the film roll are up in the plastic spool – so how does a perfect image of them get projected onto a few frames, just from the sloshing of Microdol-X in the tank?

Beats me – but then the effect is so bad, it’s almost good (but not quite)....

.

Finding a good starting point for developing B&W film in common developers is usually not a problem. So I was surprised when, after multiple internet searches, I could not find a development time for Fuji Neopan 400 in Microdol-X 1:3 dilution. I found lots of references to this film and the undiluted, stock solution of Microdol, but nothing about the dilute solution.

I’ve developed several rolls of Neopan 400 in Microdol-X 1:3 over the last few days, and feel comfortable making a recommendation for development times, specifically:

15.5 minutes at 22 C. (Note that this is 2 C warmer than most developer recommendations). Microdol-X diluted 1:3. Continuous agitation for the first 30 seconds, then vigorous agitation 10 seconds per minute thereafter. Continuous but very gentle agitation for the last 30 seconds. I always pre-soak film for 2 minutes before developing. Stop, fix, rinse as usual of course. This film does have some dye based sensitizers in it, so a round of hypo clearing agent is a good idea to remove the pink tint.

For scanning the film this has worked out well. Objectively, the negs are a bit thin and possibly could do with another minute of development, but for scanning they work out well. Shadow detail is good, and even with that last bit of agitation, highlights are not blocked up. An alternative would be to adopt the Kodak style of agitation, and agitate every 30 seconds.

I’m a bit worried since Neopan no longer appears on the fujifilm.com product list. Maybe I’m missing it, maybe another film bites the dust.

I avoided this film for a while because I interpreted the name – Neopan – to suggest that it was a new fangled tabular grain film. (Neo = new Pan = panchromatic film). It really is a very fine traditional film. Nothing against tabular grained films, btw, I just prefer the look, feel, and usage of traditional films.

Update: August 2, 2008: I haven't had a chance to do much with the Neopan and Microdol-X combination since posting this. The biggest problem has been the low volume of film that I shoot. The few batches of Microdol that I have mixed up in the last couple of years, have generally wound up going down the drain when they expired.

I have a project coming up and plan on shooting a lot Neopan 400. I decided to re-check the development time in this post. A few days ago I developed a fresh roll of 35mm Neopan 400 in Microdol X, 1:3, at 22C for 15.5 minutes. It worked great - so I'm happy to affirm the recommendation in the post from 2006.