Efke 25... I love this film.

[Khunyapan]

I recently hoarded a lot of this film in my freezer, and finally went out to shoot a roll. Developed and scanned yesterday, I am always happy with the results of this film. It's just so creamy and smooth looking, the only other film I can think of that's still being made that even comes close is Ilford Pan F+. I'm still broken up about their factory closing down. 🙁

Here's one of the photos from the roll:

P.S. Beautiful film but my GOD does it love to attract dust. Even with compressed air and brushing it off it still holds onto a lot before scanning. The photo above took me nearly 30 minutes just to clean it up. With comparison to something like HP5+, usually only takes me 5 minutes or less to clean it up.

 

[Denverdad]

Me too! It's amazing stuff which sadly I only got turned on to right about the time when production was ceasing. But its so smooth as you said, and the tonal ranges are just lovely. Especially when reverse processed by DR5 - seeing those bright, richly toned monochrome positives on the light table for the first time... just WOW! 😀

P.S.
I came to the conclusion that the not so subtle infestation of spots you sometimes see with this film is due to more than just an affinity for dust, but unfortunately to crud which seems embedded in the film itself. It is unfortunate but sometimes an Efke image can require a great deal of extra spotting work because of these defects.

 

[Khunyapan]

P.S.
I came to the conclusion that the not so subtle infestation of spots you sometimes see with this film is due to more than just an affinity for dust, but unfortunately to crud which seems embedded in the film itself. It is unfortunate but sometimes an Efke image can require a great deal of extra spotting work because of these defects.

That's pretty interesting. I heard their factory was very old and the machines were so broken down that it would cost so much to fix them that they just shut down shop instead. So that makes a lot of sense.

Still, the film is so beautiful, the extra cleaning time is worth it.

 

[Fotohuis]

It is still my favorite slow speed film. When Fotokemika decided in August 2012 to stop all production this Dutch distributor of Efke decided to put the whole Efke 25 stock to his personal stock.

Anyhow I still have a bunch of these films in 135-36 and especially in 120 roll film. Or the selected extra quality: Rollei Pan 25. Great film, single layer but on Polyester layer which attracts extra dust. But here in Holland we have a moderate climate so when drying it takes several hours in a clean room. One of the best combination for this film is Beutler/FX-1 in 1+1+10 dilution. If you never used this film: Then you have really missed something.