oscroft
Veteran
I've been reading about Chinese ERA 100 film recently and have heard good things about it, so I risked £14 (inc postage) on a pack of 10 rolls from Shanghai, and I tried it at the weekend.
I've heard people suggest it's similar to FP4, and I like FP4 (and other films around ISO 100) in Rodinal, so I developed my first roll in Rodinal 1:50. And I'm knocked out by the results. There's a few scans here.
It shows a really good tonal range and exposure latitude - I've done no tweaking on those samples other than my usual slight edge sharpening, and you can see the range of tones its captured (especially in the last shot, the one of distant brightly-lit buildings shot through a shadowy alley - a friend commented that that's the kind of result he usually only gets after he's adjusted the levels in Photoshop).
The film base is easy to handle - after a few hours reverse-wound on a spiral after drying (as I do with almost all films before scanning) it was perfectly flat for the scanner.
The only weird thing is that there are no frame numbers - nothing at all imprinted in the film margins, in fact - but if leaving out that production step makes it cheaper, that's fine by me.
Anyone else used ERA 100? Any thoughts?
Cheers,
I've heard people suggest it's similar to FP4, and I like FP4 (and other films around ISO 100) in Rodinal, so I developed my first roll in Rodinal 1:50. And I'm knocked out by the results. There's a few scans here.
It shows a really good tonal range and exposure latitude - I've done no tweaking on those samples other than my usual slight edge sharpening, and you can see the range of tones its captured (especially in the last shot, the one of distant brightly-lit buildings shot through a shadowy alley - a friend commented that that's the kind of result he usually only gets after he's adjusted the levels in Photoshop).
The film base is easy to handle - after a few hours reverse-wound on a spiral after drying (as I do with almost all films before scanning) it was perfectly flat for the scanner.
The only weird thing is that there are no frame numbers - nothing at all imprinted in the film margins, in fact - but if leaving out that production step makes it cheaper, that's fine by me.
Anyone else used ERA 100? Any thoughts?
Cheers,
