p.2 #2 · New to B&W Photography, Which Film to Use?
I pre-soak all film. The gelatin (or whatever is water soluble) in Foma films has a strong, but pleasant aroma and no color (in 35mm at least). Only used Fomapan 400 in 120 once. The results were nice, but it was fudging curly and had one million zillion spots of emulsion damage that when inverted looked like little white specks all over the film. Took forever to clean them up.
madNbad wrote:
Do you do a pre soak? I did some Fomapan 100 in a 1:50 dilution of Rodinal and had to toss both the stop and fixer because it turned everything blue. I have two rolls of 400 which should be fun to try.
p.2 #3 · New to B&W Photography, Which Film to Use?
_jim_ wrote:
I pre-soak all film. The gelatin (or whatever is water soluble) in Foma films has a strong, but pleasant aroma and no color (in 35mm at least). Only used Fomapan 400 in 120 once. The results were nice, but it was fudging curly and had one million zillion spots of emulsion damage that when inverted looked like little white specks all over the film. Took forever to clean them up.
I get those spots too sometimes on Foma 400 in 120; one theory I read is that they're caused by acidic stop baths interacting with the emulsion and if you just use water to stop development those spots don't show up. I haven't experimented with that yet, but the weird thing is that I only see those spots occasionally, not all the time. Maybe it's when my stop bath is fresh as opposed to after I've reused it for a few weeks to develop a lot of film. I'm about to make a new batch of stop bath so will see.
One frustration I forgot to mention with Foma films in 35mm is the canisters. For a while they were using the same plastic canisters that Flic Film films come in, which requires a special opener (Foma sells one and Flic Film sells the Flic Pic). I didn't want to buy one so I simply tore open the canisters with my bare hands. Now they sell these films in metal canisters, but prying the lids off is really hard. It typically takes me 5-10 minutes to get the lid off those metal canisters using either my Ilford canister opener or just a can opener. My preference is to buy the Fomapan "set," which has a resusable plastic canister with a screw-off lid: https://studioargentique.ca/products/fomapan-400-action-135-6-rolls-cartridge-pack (note that the price is in Canadian dollars).
p.2 #4 · New to B&W Photography, Which Film to Use?
Kentmere 200 is another film to absolutely try. It has far more contrast than Kentmere 400 right out of the gate and the lack of anti-halation gives the images some character. I've been pretty impressed by it.
p.2 #8 · New to B&W Photography, Which Film to Use?
I would personally not recommend Foma to people dipping their toes in film. It is a cool stock, don't get me wrong. It does have a distinct look, arguably too distinct, and is rather fussy compared to mainstream emulsions like Tri-X and HP5+. In my experience it is less scratch resistant and has less exposure latitude.
Keep in mind that the "contrast" is a function of light, exposure, development and scan/print to much greater extent than what is "built into" the film itself.
