BILLC said:
Has anyone used Russian film? Do they make film? We can get film from China, the Balkens(sp), the UK, and the US, but the FSU? Do they put T MAX or pan f through their old Feds like I do?
Bill
Answering this question I have to say I definetely used Soviet film as I lived here (Kharkov - motherland of FEDs). I used Svema brand, so I will describe this film if anyone's really interested. Here is a brief info on available for average amateur Soviet film. This is a history - I am referring to films produced between 1978 and 1991... and BTW our Feds and Zorkijs were new then ;^)
Foto-32. Blue box. 32 ISO. Very wide latitude and relatively fine grain. I can't directly compare this film to western brands as I didn't have western film then and I don't have Foto brand now. It was my favourite film, but I tryied and failed a couple of times with this film before I got development process right.
Foto-65. Green box. 65 ISO. It was most widely used film. Every newbie usually used this film, including me. This was the only film with some special measures to the emulsion resulted in keeping constant contrast. What I mean this was very forgiving film for inacurate processing time/temperature. Also, it was probably good film for pushing. Increasing development time one could get more dense negatives and normal contrast. Talking in curves terminology - over development shifts curve but angle is the same. Probably it's common property for most western film, but AFAIK that was the only film with this characteristics. It was good and bad - I realized that I usually overdevelop my film too late, when failed with Foto-32 and got too contrasty and grainy negatives. In mid of 80s soviet standard (GOST) was changed, standard contrast adjusted to western standards (I believe gamma was changed to 0.62 instead of old soviet norm 0.8) and as a result effective sensitivity was also changed. They started to mark this film as Foto-64.
Foto-130. Orange box. 130 ISO. Fast film which I never liked. It was not that fast but it was grainy. Maybe I didn't use it often because it wasn't my speed and can't say much about this film; maybe it was excellent film for someone who used it regularly. Later it was changed to Foto-125 as a result of changing standards (not emulsion).
Foto-250. Red box. 250 ISO. Really fast film for that time. Sometimes I used this film for available light. More often I used A2SH which was not available in retail stores, but professional only. A2SH was produced in bulk rolls only. It had better sensitivity in yellowish spectrum of traditional bulbs - around 380 ISO. I heard that Foto-250 was also more sensitive for bulb light, but I can't say anything about it. Foto-250 was grainy film... but you have to pay for speed.
In the end of 80s when Kodak, Ilford and others reported incredible results out of their new silver-save technologies, Svema also announced new plain crystall emulsions. I think, I read this in "Soviet Foto" magazine, and new film was supposed to be marked as FN instead of Foto. I never tried this FN stuff using old stock from my fridge. Someone told me nothing was changed, just a name on the box. Someone was in hunt for old Foto because didn't like results from new FN. Can't comment on it... really, that was time when USSR collapsed and I was a student at university... didn't spend much time shooting.
There were also colour films, really shity ones. I remember DS-4 (day light) and CLN-90 (bulb light). Much better was East German Orwocolor films. I got just excellent slides out of Orwochrome. This imported film was expensive but probably the only way to get good results in colour photography.
I never saw Kodak or Ilford film while soviet union existed. I heard someone was able to get Fomapan stuff... but it was not available for an average Ivan like me.
Cheers,
Eduard
