Fomapan 100 at 400 ASA

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martin-f5

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Fomapan 100 at 400 ASA
dev. in Adox A49 1+2
 

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In the past couple of weeks I've been experimenting with a variety of films just to see what's out there. I still love my results from delta 100 and 400 but wanted to see what's new. I generally use three films exclusively Adox KB25, Delta 100 and 400. During the past couple of months I've been printing my vintage negs from the 60's-80's that I mainly shot on Tri-X and developed in a modified Rodinal 1:100 with 10% sodium sulfite. Looking back at them I see tonality, very fine grain, sharpness and acutance that I don't see even in my delta 100. Going back to that combo is out of the question due to the changes in Tri-X. Last evening I ran a test with the new Tri-X and HP5 in my modified developer. It became quickly apparent that Tri-X is a completely new film. I think that I might get excellent results if I rate my Tri-X at 250 and develope for 15-16 minutes. The tonality is superb and the grain almost doesn't exist but I want a 400 speed film not a 250. The HP5 was better looking but the grain is greater.

To get back to Foma, I tried a few rolls with interesting results and ordered ten rolls to do more experimentation. I think the grain is a little high and think I will try my old developer combo to see what happens. Any experience with other developers rating it at 100?

Thanks
 
x-ray said:
To get back to Foma, I tried a few rolls with interesting results and ordered ten rolls to do more experimentation. I think the grain is a little high and think I will try my old developer combo to see what happens. Any experience with other developers rating it at 100?

Thanks
Click to expand...

yes, look at this page:

http://hupfer-fotografie.de/nature.html

and here, not all are foma, only the first and the last (I think)

http://hupfer-fotografie.de/prag2006.html

please regard, the scan was made not in the best resolution of my scanner,
it's made for a A4 print resolution and I'm able to reduce grain.
I didn't want to show grain, I wanted to see the quite good tonality.
I should good in the real darkroom and make a print on paper.

best regards
 
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Your work is excellent, great eye, feel for details, composition and tonality.

Grain doesn't seem to be objectionable and tonality is beautiful. I should have ten rolls tomorrow and will start evaluating it in depth. My first tests were in Rodinal 1:50 but haven't printed any yet. I'm running between the digital darkroom today and the wet darkroom and will do a couple of test prints from the Foma in the next hour.

My first test was a week ago shooting a couple of brothers cutting tobacco. I shot KB 25 in the late morning and late afternoon and delta 100 in the mist of the early morning. I loaded a roll of foma 100 and one of 200 in my F2 and shot side by side with the delta 100. The negs look very good before printing.



http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=5045
 
x-ray said:
Your work is excellent, great eye, feel for details, composition and tonality.

Grain doesn't seem to be objectionable and tonality is beautiful. I should have ten rolls tomorrow and will start evaluating it in depth. My first tests were in Rodinal 1:50 but haven't printed any yet. I'm running between the digital darkroom today and the wet darkroom and will do a couple of test prints from the Foma in the next hour.

My first test was a week ago shooting a couple of brothers cutting tobacco. I shot KB 25 in the late morning and late afternoon and delta 100 in the mist of the early morning. I loaded a roll of foma 100 and one of 200 in my F2 and shot side by side with the delta 100. The negs look very good before printing.



http://www.rangefinderforum.com/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=5045
Click to expand...

your photos are realy outstanding good,
congratulations!

Hope you will succes with the foma films,
I've developed some with Rodinal 1+50 and it works perfect.
Here I've done it with adox A49 because I had some TriX and HP5
and they work less grainy in Adox.
Setting up 1 bottle with Adox I've to use the developer :)

In Prague I bought some R09 developer wich is the tschechian pendant to Rodinal, so in future I'll use that.
In the fomashop they told me this is the common developer with best results for the fomapan 100. Even professionals mostly use R09.

My expirience is printing is allways less grainy and more sharp than scanning the negatives.
I'm allways fighting with vuescan to get the best results :bang:
 
Thanks for the tip on R09. I've seen it listed and had a feeling it was the original version of Rodinal. I'll have to order a bottle. I just mad a print from a foma 100 neg and so far it looks very good. Excellent tonality and sharp.
 
Foma films are actually known for their comparatively low speed, with many developers you'll be hard pressed to get 400 ASA out of Foma 100. Fomadon LQN is the exception.

Your picture is good, and Foma 100 is a great film, but to me it looks pretty grainy, and you can see e.g. at the lens how contrast is really stretched. Try taking the same scene with a microfilm such as ADOX CMS one day. And you must have developed for about half an hour to push it two stops in ATM49 1+2. The reference time for 100 ASA is 17 minutes at one inversion per thirty seconds, and even then I have trouble getting full 100 ASA out of it.

IMHO if you want more than 100 ASA don't use Foma 100, switch to Foma 400. I find that even that film is hard to get more than 250 ASA out of at good quality, unless I use the reference developer Fomadon LQN.

Philipp
 
I'm not trying to use the fomapan 100 as a 400ASA film,
it was a fault I made in holiday useing the foma 100 at 400 ASA film
and wanted to get these 16 photos in the best conditions.

But looking at these results it's not so bad as I supposed.

Beste Grüße nach Berlin,
du glücklicher hast ja den Fotoimpex vor der Haustüre.
 
For future reference, I've gotten very good results from Fomapan 100 at EI200 with Diafine and acceptable results at EI400. The grain is better, to my eyes, than your examples but that is such a subjective thing that it's hard to use it for anything.

I've come to like Foma a lot and consider it my primary black & white film now.

William
 
wlewisiii said:
I've come to like Foma a lot and consider it my primary black & white film now.
Click to expand...

I want to like this film, but having difficulty with some parts of it -- I get darker details blocked up where with acros and tri-x I don't. Tried the 200 flavor with rodinal and diafine. Actually, in diafine, I got best results of the 200 flavor by shooting it at 100. Weird! :bang: Had tried it once in xtol, need to do it again, I wasn't sure about the results. These are the three developers I have at home. *shrug*
 
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