Steve M.
Veteran
Recently someone, I think it was Raid, mentioned a seller on the auction site that had what was supposed to be a B&W C41 film that was patterned after Ilford XP2. Turns out it was made in the EU, not the US as the ad stated, and packaged in China. He dropped his price to $114. 86 w/ free Priority Shipping. I couldn't resist.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...obXqOr4%3D&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK:MEWNX:IT
He sent the film quickly, and offers a full money back refund if you're not happy. Just keep the one roll and send it all back, so the risk was about $15.
The film was in black, unmarked containers and it arrived safely in good shape. One thing I'm wondering is the expiration date, as it isn't marked anywhere. You can also forget about keeping track of your shots by the neg numbers as there aren't any! Well, there are some, here and there, but they don't match up to the actual frame numbers. In the photos of the negs on a light table, one shows the developed film by itself, the other shows the film in comparison to XP2 (the Ilford is on top). As you can see, there's no color mask like the Kodak film.
The film was taken to Walgreens for processing and scanning. This is the same Walgreens that I always use, so hopefully it will act as a control of sorts.
So, how does it perform? Good and bad, it turns out. My first look at the scanned negs on the computer monitor showed the familiar, digital-like grain structure of XP2, but it also showed a lot more grain that I am used to. In fact, at this point I was ready to send the film back. The photos looked unsharp as well.
I downloaded a free version of Noiseware's Community Edition and cleaned up a few of the negs. Wow! Made a huge difference, and now I'm considering shooting another roll at a different ISO setting, as I think a lot of the larger grain may have come from incorrect exposure for the film's true native ISO speed, whatever that is. The cleaned negs look really good (shot w/ my R2A and a Summar) but still show some artifacts that came up from filtering the files thru the software. It may need it's default filtering setting turned down.
Conclusion? I don't know. It sure looks promising, but once I use another roll I won't have 99 rolls to send back, and I guess I won't be able to return it. At this point I'm going to email the seller and ask about the expiration date, as well as possible overexposure vis a vis true ISO, and see what he says.
[/img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4142/5442354105_20eb94d569_z.jpg[/img]
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...obXqOr4%3D&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK:MEWNX:IT
He sent the film quickly, and offers a full money back refund if you're not happy. Just keep the one roll and send it all back, so the risk was about $15.
The film was in black, unmarked containers and it arrived safely in good shape. One thing I'm wondering is the expiration date, as it isn't marked anywhere. You can also forget about keeping track of your shots by the neg numbers as there aren't any! Well, there are some, here and there, but they don't match up to the actual frame numbers. In the photos of the negs on a light table, one shows the developed film by itself, the other shows the film in comparison to XP2 (the Ilford is on top). As you can see, there's no color mask like the Kodak film.
The film was taken to Walgreens for processing and scanning. This is the same Walgreens that I always use, so hopefully it will act as a control of sorts.
So, how does it perform? Good and bad, it turns out. My first look at the scanned negs on the computer monitor showed the familiar, digital-like grain structure of XP2, but it also showed a lot more grain that I am used to. In fact, at this point I was ready to send the film back. The photos looked unsharp as well.
I downloaded a free version of Noiseware's Community Edition and cleaned up a few of the negs. Wow! Made a huge difference, and now I'm considering shooting another roll at a different ISO setting, as I think a lot of the larger grain may have come from incorrect exposure for the film's true native ISO speed, whatever that is. The cleaned negs look really good (shot w/ my R2A and a Summar) but still show some artifacts that came up from filtering the files thru the software. It may need it's default filtering setting turned down.
Conclusion? I don't know. It sure looks promising, but once I use another roll I won't have 99 rolls to send back, and I guess I won't be able to return it. At this point I'm going to email the seller and ask about the expiration date, as well as possible overexposure vis a vis true ISO, and see what he says.



[/img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4142/5442354105_20eb94d569_z.jpg[/img]






