Rollei ScanFilm 400CN: Huh?

[amateriat]

Okay, when it comes to most things photographic, I'm pretty much a live-and-let-live sort. There are many roads to imaging enlightenment (I get evidence of this every time I come here, happily).

But this completely flummoxes me.

Going for an old-school emulsion sounds fine. A color-neg film sans orange layer for faster scanning (not sure about whether it's better)? Cool.

Bringing back GAF 500? WHY?

Heavens, I can think of half a dozen "dead emulsion office" film types to resurrect, and they go and pick this. True, I haven't tried a roll of this stuff, so perhaps I should put a sock in it until I do (although, at $10 a throw, I might have to think a bit about it). But I do remember GAF (neé Ancso) 500, and 640T, and 3M1000, and still have examples of all the above. And, no, I don't want to go back.

Your nostalgia may vary, of course.

Our own Mr. Hicks wrote the film up, presumably not that long ago. Roger, what am I missing here? Is this the film my Holga 135 has been awaiting? Or am I just being a true agsinst-the-grain hardass over this?


- Barrett

 

[MikeL]

Barrett, my photos already look "warm, grainy, unsharp, and desaturated", but it's due to my "skills" as a photographer. I'm thinking of designing a Photoshop filter called the Mike-look (trademark) that combines a "not-in-focus" slide bar and "expose-off" plus "develop-off" slide bars. The look that's taken me years to develop could be yours in a few seconds.

 

[Keith]

Barrett, my photos already look "warm, grainy, unsharp, and desaturated", but it's due to my "skills" as a photographer. I'm thinking of designing a Photoshop filter called the Mike-look (trademark) that combines a "not-in-focus" slide bar and "expose-off" plus "develop-off" slide bars. The look that's taken me years to develop could be yours in a few seconds.

Excellent .... that's just the incentive I needed to introduce my own software named 'Dust Bunnies' which will introduce all sorts of artifacts into a clean scan and give it that 'dropped on the floor just before scanning' look! 😛

 

[Roger Hicks]

Dear Barrett,

No, you're not missing anything, except that it's not a reintroduction: it's an aerial emulsion from Agfa-Gevaert, so the cost of introduction was trivial. Freestyle didn't quote the bit about loading under VERY subdued light, either; it's on a polyester base and you'll get fogging of the first few-to-several frames if you don't.

The lack of the orange mask is an irrelevance: all scanners 'see past' it, and Maco/Rollei's assertion that you can print on B+W paper is not really true; the tonality is useless for most subjects if you do, though you can get interesting lith prints from it.

I didn't expect to like it at all, but despite myself, I did. It's usable for exactly what I said -- vintage-style, grainy, desaturated shots, with poor sharpness. My feeling overall is that at worst its existence does no harm, and at best, it can suit a particular style of photography: I tried it for re-creating the look of 1950s postcards, for example. That review was in Shutterbug; maybe I should do one for www.rogerandfrances.com as well.

In other words, it's so bad it's good, though at $10 a roll, you'd really need to want the look. The argument that you can recreate it in Photoshop cuts no ice with me: Photoshop users reckon you can recreate anything, and so you can, subject to two reservations. One is that it may take a lot longer than just shooting a different film, and the second is that the re-creation is almost never exact: it's 'close enough', which usually isn't.

Cheers,

R.

 

[amateriat]

Roger: Thanks, and point taken. Maybe I will put a roll of this crazy stuff in my lil' Holga for the hell of it (at least I'll get a real good idea about light leaks in that sucker). Meanwhile, I'll try and dig up an example of GAF 500 so ell the young'uns here can see a bit of the fabulous stuff they missed out on. 🙄


- Barrett

 

[Roger Hicks]

Roger: Thanks, and point taken. Maybe I will put a roll of this crazy stuff in my lil' Holga for the hell of it (at least I'll get a real good idea about light leaks in that sucker). Meanwhile, I'll try and dig up an example of GAF 500 so ell the young'uns here can see a bit of the fabulous stuff they missed out on. 🙄


- Barrett

Dear Barrett,

You mean you have any Asco that hasn't faded to almost nothing? Well, I suppose Ansco 500 is by Ansco color standards quite recent. I have quarter-plate Ansco trannies going back to the 40s and there's hardly anything left -- unlike Kodachromes of similar vintage.

I was amazed at how Digital ROC handled badly faded originals, though, and I warn you: there really is a certain (weird, degenerate) magic to ScanFilm.

And yes, you'll certainly be well warned of ALL light leaks. Load the camera in a shady corner.

Cheers,

R.

 

[amateriat]

Dear Barrett,

You mean you have any Asco that hasn't faded to almost nothing?

Not only that, but the last time I had a look at them (some railroad shooting I did around 1977), they still had that same, telltale brownish-red bias I recall Herbert Keppler pointing out some months later in Modern Photography. Not sure if I felt vindicated or just more upset...

Funny you should mention ROC: I think I have that, and a few other digital tools laying about that I next to never use. Might be fun to try out, though I don't have many examples like the GAF/Ansco one (silly tyro I was back then...I mostly shot on Kodachrome and some Agfachrome CT18). 😉


- Barrett

 

[donbga]

I 'll remind everyone of the beautiful work done by Sarah Moon in the '70s using Ansco 500. I found this film to work wonderfully for certain subjects. If the Rollei film is anything like Ansco 500 I'll be using it, though I'm not happy about the price.

Don Bryant