fomapan 400 – Timothy Whittlesea

Accidentally over exposing Lumography Lady Grey by four stops

January 16, 2019February 2, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: I over exposed a film by a huge amount, but it turned out ok.

Whenever possible, I get my film supplies from Parallax in Brixton – they are wonderful, knowledgeable, and the pricing is competitive. They are also not open over the holidays. So, with precious few days remaining before jetting (metaphorically, in reality we drove) off to sunny Cornwall for a few days, I needed to find somewhere else to get a few rolls of film.

I ventured out with no particular place in mind, but aware that if all was lost I could stop at snappy-snaps and pay £8 for a roll of HP5. On my journey I walked past the Lumography store in Soho and wandered in. I have never considered purchasing anything from lumo (I am not sure about spending that much money on a camera made of plastic that makes your film look like an Instagram filter). I ended up purchasing three rolls of ‘Lady Grey’ for what I believed to be the not completely unreasonable price of £16. Some internet searching later reveals that Lumography Lady Grey is re-labelled Fomapan 400, so £16 is completely unreasonable. Thoughts about the plastic camera shop confirmed.

The story really begins with the realisation that Lady Grey is not DX coded, no surprises there given that the Foma isn’t either, although it is beyond me as to why anyone is making film without DX coding. My camera assumed an ISO of 100 for non-dx coded film, so loading the 400 ISO should simply have involved setting the exposure compensation down two stops to make sure everything was going to work correctly.

However, holiday over excitement led to me doing the exact opposite, and accidently setting the exposure compensation to +2. Now my camera was not only exposing for a 100 ISO film, it was adding another two stops of exposure. I didn’t notice anything amiss until I got towards the end of the film and the day began to become darker – then the noticeable amount of time the shutter was open for each shot became apparent. By this time though I only had a couple more frames to shoot, so I left everything as it was and decided to see what happened when I developed the film.

The result really should be massively over exposed images. Developing the film normally would be an extremely risky strategy – pulling a couple of stops, no problem, but pulling so many that I am not actually sure what ISO the camera was shooting for (something less than 25?) would require a different approach. As the developing time for 400 films is relatively short anyway, reducing this didn’t seem viable, so I decided to do a stand development with a reduced amount of developer. So I mixed up a 1/100 dilution of Rodinol then left the film swimming for about half an hour. This was entirely unscientifically based on dividing the 120 minutes that ISO 400 would take at 1/100 by four.

Amazingly, it worked. My negatives are not perfect, there are a couple of frames where I think the developer has given up, they are quite flat and the pictures I took in the middle of the day are still, definitely, over exposed.

This gallery has some examples with no post processing.

[Show slideshow]

What is kind of amazing though is the tolerance the film has to over exposure, and even with a completely experimental development process, how forgiving the film has been. There are at least a few frames of perfectly usable images – I took the whole roll to the darkroom yesterday and there is still more than enough detail left to make some nice prints. What is perhaps helpful is that some of my favourite images were shot in some lovely hazy weather, into some ‘sort of’ sunshine. Perhaps the print I got from the frame below isn’t perfect, but it is certainly evocative. You can buy a copy if you like.

In conclusion – Lady Gray – it’s an ok film in an emergency, though it costs more per roll than Foma 400. Check your camera settings carefully before you start shooting. Don’t give up hope on something that hasn’t been shot as it should be, it’s a perfect opportunity to try out something new in the development process.

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Photography

Film Comparison: Kentmere 400 Vs Fomapan 400

August 27, 2018February 27, 2021
by twhittlesea

TLDR: Differences are minimal, both are cheap, Kentmere very very slightly better.

I have been using Kentmere 400 for years now, primarily because its comes in at the cheaper (cheapest?) end of the spectrum compared to Ilford and Kodak offerings, but also because I think it performs better than its price point. I guess that having used it for so long is also a factor, but I have a lot of confidence in Kentmere 400.

I decided to give Fomapan 400 a try after discovering that it is exactly the same price as Kentmere 400. Why experiment with something new when I am comfortable with Kentmere? Well because as Neil deGrasse Tyson says, ‘Exploration is what you do when you don’t know what you are doing”.

The experiment started by shooting a roll of Kentmere 400 and a roll of Fomapan 400. The only concession I made to scientific method was shooting them both on the same day, so there were similar lighting conditions. But, as might have become evident at this point, my film choices are not exactly highly informed, I wasn’t about to shoot test targets or anything ridiculous like that – I just used both films as I usually would, then developed them according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Some have noted that the foma offering doesn’t perform well at box speed, whereas there seems to be a fair amount of confidence in the Kentmere film working at 400. I shot both films at box speed, and didn’t experience any issues.

Lets talk grain. I developed both films with rodinol, so a good deal of grain was to be expected. I chose the images below specifically because they have some big chunks of sky.

Fomapan 400

Kentmere 400

Excuse the scanner artefacts – looking directly at the negatives, there is perhaps a very small difference in the darker areas of the sky, but this is marginal, so marginal in fact that I am not really sure you can call a winner.

I am interested in contrast in less than optimal conditions, and the detail we’re able to pull out of specifically the darker areas of the image. Both of the images below are lower contrast than anything I’d ever print, but as you can see, whilst we still have some detail in the shadows on the Kentmere image, our Fomapan has some pretty fine detail right across the image. It is nice to know that detail is there, especially if I was thinking of taking this negative to the dark room and might want to pull it out in some of those areas:

Fomapan 400

Kentmere 400

I take most of my photos outside in standard British weather, and I need a film that can be under or over exposed occasionally and still give results that I can get acceptable images from. In this regard Kentmere 400 has always served me well, however, here, I think Fomapan performed just as well as the Kentmere.

Now we have a dilemma, my one roll experiment seems to be telling me that the Fomapan 400 is not a bad film for my taste – the issue comes that reviews of this film are absolutely all over the place. Some people love it, some hate it. This really seems to centre around people getting very variable results in different developers, the sense that you’ll get excessive grain (especially in Rodinol), and that the film doesn’t shoot well at box speed.

So which is the better film? I can definitely see that whereas the Kentmere 400 is tried and tested, seems to give consistent results, as I have personally found, and is generally quite well respected as a cheaper 400 film, the Fomapan 400 is divisive. It is a bit of a marmite film that gives some very different results depending on the use case.

I absolutely understand that for someone looking for a lower grain and more of a modern look the Fomapan emulsion isn’t going to work, but then, I am not really sure that the Kentmere 400 would meet this requirement either – neither of these films wins in that department. Personally though, as someone who accepts, even likes grain, and isn’t averse to the look that you’ll get out of both of these films in Rodinol I am definitely thinking that the Fomapan offering will get a few more chances to impress.

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Tag: fomapan 400

Accidentally over exposing Lumography Lady Grey by four stops

Film Comparison: Kentmere 400 Vs Fomapan 400