Really thin negs with Fomapan 200

mugent

Well-known
Local time
6:18 PM
Joined
Dec 20, 2009
Messages
470
Just processed a roll of FomaPan 200 in D76, 6 mins, stock solution.

All shots apart from a couple are unusably thin, even those couple aren't great. I metered a bit lazily, I'll admit that, but these shots are way under exposed/or under processed.
D76 is my usual dev, no change there.

Anyone had this experience with Fomapan? It claims to have wide latitude, that it can be shot at 800 with no dev alterations.

Cheers

Moray
 
You said it yourself, you metered lazily and probably under process... Did you checked the temperature of your Dev?
You already know what you should do. Use your film correctly.
I shot Fomapan 400 for a while. Prefer HP5 because of the grain. But properly used Foma films are very good quality.
 
You said it yourself, you metered lazily and probably under process... Did you checked the temperature of your Dev?
You already know what you should do. Use your film correctly.
I shot Fomapan 400 for a while. Prefer HP5 because of the grain. But properly used Foma films are very good quality.

Dev temp was probably a degree or two too warm, so that should not make that kind of difference.
A little more research shows me that it's true speed is more like 100, so I think it was a catalogue of errors, rather than just a single issue is to blame here... Will try again shooting at 100 with better metering.
 
If you have a close look at the Fomapan 200 data sheet you can see that the regular speed of FP 200 is around 160. Indeed in a speed loss developer like Rodinal/R09 it is even less.
The combination Xtol 1+1 and FP 200 E.I.160 is very good and I can really recommended this ( or the similar Fomadon Excel W27 ).

If you want to have more grain Rodinal/R09 E.I. 100 gives very sharp negatives and also a good tonal range.

FP 200 is a mixture of hexagonal and cubical type Silver haloganide crystals and pretty unique.
 
Any film exposed at its nominal sensitivity then processed during 6 min with D76 stock will be under-developed.

Average time for D76 stock is 9 min. This makes a huge difference which isn't compensated by one or two Celsius degrees over 20C.
 
Back
Top Bottom