Arista EDU Ultra 200 Development

[dougwillobee]

I shot my first roll of Arista EDU Ultra 200 35mm the other day. I developed it last night in Rodinal 1+25 5 minutes. The film definitely has a mid-century look, but I was surprised at the amount of pronounced grain. More pronounced than Tri-X to my eye. It is certainly has a "look" that might be appropriate for some subject matter. But maybe over the top for others.

I'm planning to run another test roll in Rodinal 1+50, but I'm looking for opinions about other developers that might maintain the look without quite so much of the grain?


Thanks in advance,

Doug

 

[presspass]

I think this is the same film as Foma Creative 200. I have not tried Rodinal, but have used D-23 and Beutler. Beutler 1:1:10 for about 10 minutes at 68 degrees F worked well for me; the grain was not intrusive and the sharpness was excellent.

 

[charjohncarter]

Rodinal: makes grain. I try to not use Rodinal in 35mm, but that is because I don't like grain. That doesn't mean I like digital's surgical images, I like film, but I just don't like too much grain.

 

[Jan Pedersen]

Foma creative 200 or Arista EDU Ultra 200 does look grainy in Rodinal as so many other films does. I have used it a bit in Rodinal 1+50 and it is grainy but with nice tonality.
Pyrocat is a very good developer and will give you less visible grain than Rodinal. Expose it as 100 or maybe 120 if low contrast.

 

[x-ray]

I've used quite a bit in HC110 1:47 in sheet and been experimenting with 35 now. HC110 works well with it IMO. The grain isn't bad at all. I've also tried D76 straight and had very good results. I'm not a huge fan of D76 but it works nicely with it.

I'm a big fan of the 200. It responds exceptionally well to extended and reduced development to control contrast. In sheet Ive found it to be exceptional for platinum printing and does have a 50's look when printed on fiber based silver gelatin paper. It has a rich luminous tonality.

The 200 reminds me of super xx and Ive read it has similar characteristics. I think it's well worth spend time testing different developers with it.

Another combination I've dound to work well with Foma 100 is Acufine 1:3 rating the film at 160 ISO. I compared it to D76 1:3 and Rodinal and found it to be much less grainy than Rodinal.

 

[Noll]

I recently developed fomapan 200 in xtol 1:1 and the grain is very minimal. The contrast was also quite low so though, so I still need to tweak this combination.

 

[Beemermark]

I've also tried D76 straight and had very good results. I'm not a huge fan of D76 but it works nicely with it.

What's wrong with D-76?

When I was young (and that was a very, very long time ago) I did the hunt for the magical developer. Supposedly anything was better than D-76. After chasing that holy grail I settled on D-76 as the best developer for Kodak films, and then later Ilford (35mm to 5x7). After 30 years and being on this forum I started experimenting again. Rodinal, HC110, Xtol, UFG, who knows.

I'm going back to D-76. 1:1.

 

[Jockos]

D76 is great with cubic grain and good with tabular, TMAX dev is ok with cubic but awesome with tabular.

XTOL though, is ****ing awesome with both tabular and cubic, so my bet for an emulsion that's a combination of the two, would be this.

 

[Fotohuis]

Fomapan Creative 200 is an iso 160 film with a mixture of cubical and hexagonal Silver crystals. It is doing very well in Xtol/Fomadon Excel W27 1+1 or Windisch W665. The last is an Ultra Fine Grain type developer which will costs 1F stop in iso rate. So in W665 you have to expose iso 80-100 but even in 35mm you will have grainless negatives. In Xtol you can expose on E.I. 160. Also a very good combination. PC-TEA 1+50 is also very good. You can compare it with Xtol 1+2 when using the 1+50 dilution. In R09/Rodinal 1+50 of Beutler/FX-1 1+1+8 you will have pronounced and very visible grain with this film. Also take care of the soft emulsion for this film. The tonal range can be very wide because with the right combination this film has a big linear logD curve (HD), like Kodak TMY-2 has.
In the past it was called Fomapan T200 but under pressure from Kodak, Foma changed the name around 2003. Before 2001 there was also a T800 film.

 

[Fotohuis]

T200/Creative 200 (Foma) under the electronic microscope .....



Enhanced grain with R09/Rodinal 1+50:

Almost grainless with W665 1+0:

A good average with Xtol 1+1 / Fomadon Excel W27 1+1:

All examples from 35mm Fomapan Creative 200 film.

 

[charjohncarter]

Fotohuis, I been using some Foma 100 and 400 recently in HC-110. Tonality is fine, I use it here in the USA because I'm nervous about lose of available film, so I want to support film producers.

I like this one using foma 100 (120):

AristaEDUultra100 AristaLiquidDeveloper by carter3john, on Flickr

 

[Fotohuis]

The chance that Kodak/Alaris gets lost instead of Foma seems to be much bigger. They took their lossses of about 850 million $ last year by a total selling out of Kodak Patents, inventions etc. to Samsung, Apple etc.

Hopefully they can survive now because they dropped all not commercial profitable films. They should have done this quicker and also the downsizing of the plants were to slow in following the film and paper market the last 10 years.

Foma destructed their big coating plant already in 2002. They followed the market precisely every year. Concerning their film palette it could be time to re-introduce a reworked and improved T800 film. Harman/Ilford is the only manufacturer of very high speed B&W film now (Delta 3200, iso 1250-1600 in fact).

Kodak has the technology (Tgrain) but they skipped their Tmax3200 (also iso 1000-1250 in fact).

Not very different to Foma T800/T200 films. A real iso 800 film would be very nice in the actual film choice because also Fuji skipped their Neopan 400/1600 films. Maybe a gap in the market for the near future. 🙂

 

[Fotohuis]

Of course you can push the Tmax 400 (TMY-2) to iso 800 too. The TMY-2 film from Kodak is a very good film. Full box speed, fine grain, sharp and the quality is OK. Less grain then an Ilford Delta 400 but a different behaviour. You can make almost grainless prints from 35mm to 40x50cm from the TMY-2 film. The logD curve is very linear over a big range so the Grey scale can be very good.

Here an example of TMY-2 (in HC-110 dil.B) in my Zorki-6 and J-12 F/2,8-35mm. Gone to a 40x50cm enlargement without any problem.

in 40x50cm:

Eindhoven, the Netherlands, near the Philips Football stadion and Philips Lighting.

 

[charjohncarter]

Thanks for the information Robert. I always learn something useful from your posts.

 

[x-ray]

What's wrong with D-76?

When I was young (and that was a very, very long time ago) I did the hunt for the magical developer. Supposedly anything was better than D-76. After chasing that holy grail I settled on D-76 as the best developer for Kodak films, and then later Ilford (35mm to 5x7). After 30 years and being on this forum I started experimenting again. Rodinal, HC110, Xtol, UFG, who knows.

I'm going back to D-76. 1:1.

D76 contains high a concentration of sodium sulfite. Sodium sulfite dissolves silver and winds up being deposited on highlights. This suppresses highlight information making them block up easier.

D76 is a good general purpose developer but I'm a much bigger fan of HC110 and Rodinal. I've used Rodinal for near fifty years and HC110 for forty.

 

[Beemermark]

D76 contains high a concentration of sodium sulfite. Sodium sulfite dissolves silver and winds up being deposited on highlights. This suppresses highlight information making them block up easier.

D76 is a good general purpose developer but I'm a much bigger fan of HC110 and Rodinal. I've used Rodinal for near fifty years and HC110 for forty.

Thanks, I've used HC110 on and off and think I will go back to that. I recently started using Rodinal and it has too much grain for my liking.

 

[Fotohuis]

You can use R09/Rodinal without hesitation on slow- and medium speed speed films even in 35mm:

Tour Montparnasse, Paris, Fuji Acros 100 in R09/Rodinal 1+50. Elmarit 21mm.

 

[shadowfox]

I recently developed fomapan 200 in xtol 1:1 and the grain is very minimal. The contrast was also quite low so though, so I still need to tweak this combination.

I wouldn't worry too much about contrast in the negative.
Contrast can be increased in both darkroom printing or digital, but it's very hard to recover blown highlights or murky shadows.

 

[Fotohuis]

I'm planning to run another test roll in Rodinal 1+50, but I'm looking for opinions about other developers that might maintain the look without quite so much of the grain?

For the T.S. :

FP200 in R09/Rodinal 1+50, 6x7cm roll film format.

FP200 in Xtol 1+1, 6x7cm roll film format.


Just some holidays photos, made in Ukraine. My daughter first, second my wife and our Dalmatian dog "Stip" (=Dot in Dutch).

Already a few years ago. So you can imagine we are following the news what happens in Minsk now too. Crappy situation with the Russians ....

 

[Nokton48]

I've used quite a bit in HC110 1:47 in sheet

Hi X-ray,

I am just getting started with FOMA 200 in 9x12cm sheets. I'm interested to hear more from you regarding using the HC110 1:47. How do you process your film? I also have a good stock of 9x12cm FOMA 100 (I have 250 sheets of each in my deep freeze). So far in 9x12cm I have only used EFKE PL100, processed in a Unicolor Film Drum, with Uniroller. OK but tedious and I think the JOBO 2551 is the way to go for me.

What times/temps have worked for you? I am considering purchasing a used JOBO 2551 Multi Tank 5 with two sheet film reels. With this equipment, I should be able to run twelve sheets of 9x12cm in one run, or eighteen sheets of 6x9cm in one run, if I buy a third sheet film reel.

Perfect for my future needs, I'm thinking.