Different Types of Film
The cool thing about shooting film is the choices! There are so many films to choose from – some are fairly basic, day-to-day films, some not so much. I have tried quite a few films, so here are some notes on them. There is some overlap with the Amsterdam On Film
Cinestill 800T
I’m going to start with the most interesting, at least for me. I’ve only actually shot one roll of this, but I enjoyed it enough that I have another couple of rolls ready to go for when I next get a decent opportunity to shoot it. It has a wide latitude (though I did find mine ended up being a little thin, there was still a very nice usable image on the film). I’ve mentioned it before in this series – it is based on Kodak Vision3 500T – they estimate it to be around 800T when processed in C41 (that’s “standard” colour negative processing) but I’ve seen tweets from them claiming it is usable in the range ISO 100-1600 or so without push/pull processing! (though they do say the optimal range is 500-1600)
There is a company in Kent that packages Vision500T without removing the backing. They also offer a processing service which incorporates a step to remove the backing. I’m very tempted to give this a go at some point to see what it’s like.
Kodak Ektar 100
Ilford HP5
Washi X 400 Maskless
This is an odd one! It is ISO 400 colour negative film, but rather than the film base being an orangy colour, it is clear! There isn’t a huge amount written online about this stuff. It is, however, an interesting idea. Supposedly it was originally designed for road traffic surveillance. It is claimed that it can be processed as either negative film (C41) or slide (E6) which makes sense when you think about it since it doesn’t have a mask. I’ve found some photos online where it has been processed as E6 and it doesn’t look bad – though I’d be tempted to process mine as C41 to see how that turns out. I’ll post more on this once I’ve seen the results!
Some Others I Will Be Trying Soon
- Fujifilm Velvia 50 - both fresh and really quite expired
- Kodak Double-X 5222 – Black and white motion picture film
- Kodak Portra 400 – Versatile, fairly fast 120 roll film
- Kono Donau – this stuff is crazy – ISO 6 film that is actually intended for digital prints back to film.
- Kono Kolorit 125T – Claims to be based on motion picture film but doesn’t go into more details
- Dufay Pan – Some insanely old (think 1970s or maybe earlier) ISO 20 black and white film – no clue what, if anything, will come out of this!