georg_kern

Adox ATM49 (former Calbe A49) is by far the best suited developer for APX400. It is somehow related to the old Agfa Atomal (based on a p-phenylenediamine derivative), which itself was highly recommended for ASA-400 Agfas back in his days.

It is the only developer (AFAIK) that gives full speed with APX400, has compensating characterics, and is fine-grained with good sharpness (although APX still won't be as fine-grained as Tri-X, e.g.). Use it diluted 1:1 for the recommended time.

Really. Use it. You can't do better for portraits on APX400. APX400 is not-so-great in other developers (much grain, few shadow detail); Rodinal is good only when you want maximum grain with good acutance. But then, it will give you only 200-250 ASA.

Regards

Georg

Benny,

I agree with you 100%. The new Portras have a lot of new technology built in (2-photon technology, IIRC), and are a major step forward. Maybe they are the last big technology step in C41 films we will experience. But the marketing is unbelievable. Why give away free rolls of film? Anybody interested in this film would have bought one to try it out anyway. They could have made special introduction offers like "4+1 for free" instead, or something like that.

Surely, it is not just Kodak. The dealers seem to prefer to sell no film at all, instead of selling the old one cheaper, at the new ones in addition. It really looks like just nobody cares about SELLING film anymore.

While the engineers are still providing great products, the marketing people seem to undermine this, just to get rid of the traditional analog business.

Regards

Georg

It is the same situation here in Europe. I think it is ridiculous to force people to buy the "old" stuff, when the new one should be available for almost half a year. From the samples I have seen in the net, the new Portras are a major improvement over the old ones. Why sending out free samples, when they cannot make the film available?

Could you imagine a company holding back a new digital camera (or even a new memory card) for six months, because there are some old models still sitting on the dealers shelves? No way. But they think they can do this to the old-fashioned, slow-thinking (in their eyes) idiots, who still soot film.

This is a hundred miles away from serious marketing.

Regards

Georg

Alan,

you are right, 120 was still the "original" Reala, the same as the first generation Reala in 35mm. Fantastic film, which founded the great reputation of the name "Reala". Reala Superia is a just-better-than-average-consumer-film,and does not have much in common with the real "Reala" except the name. I think it had been first released as "Nexia 100 D" in APS format, and only after some time it was also distributed in 35mm, abusing the great name.

Unfortunately, AFAIK Reala 120 had been cacelled a few months ago.

Regards

Georg

As it is supposed to be a 100ASA film, grain "comparable to HP5" does not sound that attractive.

For sure it is amazing, that such a cheap product gives negatives with a picture on it. I still would not bother to waste my time with it.

Georg

Jay,

a standard developer does not release any fumes. Stopbath smells like vinegar (if made from acetic acid), but this is harmless. Fixer can release some SO2, which can irritate your lungs when you keep your head closely over the fixer tray for minutes to examine the print; or when you develop and fix prints in a small room without any ventilation and without ever opening the door. But no such thing is likely to occur during film development, where the fixer is used in a closed tank.

I am a little surprised that none of the posters so far had a problem with the word "kitchen" in your question. It is defintively minimal standard in "good laboratory practice" to keep chemicals as far away from food as possible. Usually there is not much take-up of chemicals through the skin (especially with the water-based stuff used in photography), so if you spill a few droplets on your hands, just wash it away quickly. But when you contaminate yout foodstuff with chemicals, uptake over the digestive tract is much more efficient (and therefore more dangerous).

So, please, use the bathroom (or any other room with running water and a sink) for handling chemicals, NEVER the kitchen. You ALWAYS spray some little droplets or some tiny powder when you work with chemicals (I learned this when I once handled a really strong powder dye: spots everywhere), so work in a room with no food, and that can be easily cleaned from time to time.

Gloves are not essential for usual B&W stuff, but try to avoid contact of chemicals with your skin. If it happens, rinse with water immediately. If you have to left hands (or a not completely tight developing tank), use gloves. It does not hurt.

Simple paper face masks do not help anything to avoid inhalation of fumes. You could use one when mixing a developer from powder, but this is kind of work I prefer to do outside of my flat (e.g. on the balcony), with the wind blowing away drom me. Please do not even THINK of mixing powder developer in the kitchen.

There is no reason for paranoia, but please always use your common sense when working with chemicals - especially when you work in your flat, where you might spend most of the day.

Regards

Georg

Larry - Maco Cube is now "Rollei R3". Same film, but additional back-coating to avoid extensive curling.

Lupus does not sell new production, but leftovers from the Agfa bankruptcy. They also put the Agfa logo on some cheap, far-east digital cameras, memory cards and so on.

Georg

Al,

the mysterious "Black List" is apperarently nothing but a special price list, where Maco tries to sell off their last remaining stocks of original Agfa material. It is not a "Black list" against some dealers, like someone might think.

APX100 in 120 format is now exclusively sold as the rebadged "Retro 100", because it was cut and spooled by a 3rd party manufacturer. There is some information on the net, that this was cut from master rolls of 35mm material (no back coating?), but I am not sure about this.

Regards

Georg

Hi.

"60ASA" is not an "official" ASA step.

The line goes .....32-40-50-64-80-100-125-160.... and so on.

"One stop" actually means a doubling step (full stop, e.g. 50 to 100), and is usually divided into three even steps (1/3 stops, e.g. 32 to 40); although sometimes the numbers are a little bit modified for practical reasons, so one full stop above 64 ist 125 (and not 128).

Regards

Georg

Let me say, it would be quite surprising, if digital and analog looked the same. Both have very distinct contrast curves. Digital has a very long "toe", but steep highlights which leads to bad highlight dynamics and bad colour seperation in very light colours.

In a digital capture, sharpening is absolutely neccessary, and gives a differnt sharpness impression than an unmanipulated analog print.

Also, digital pictures, which are not shot at minimum ISO, need denoising, and this ALWAYS removes structural details and smoothes otherwise rough surfaces.

Add Bayer interpolation, which always corrupts details.

When "film" prints look like digital, they do so because they were scanned and printed, and the operator tried to copy the "en-vogue" digital look by overdoing colour manipulation, de-noiseing and sharpening.

I am still amazed what fantastic look could be created just by chemistry, while digital which should have (in theory) unlimited capacity for calibration still looks strange at many motivs. In my eyes, a good digital print is still no match for a good (!) analog print. But, BTW, it is much easier and faster to produce a useable picture under most circumstances by using digital.

A lot of people prefer the artificial, clean sound of a digital piano over the natural one. All the "Aaahs" and "Ooohs" in the photo.net-galery for plastic birds and plastic landscapes speak the same languange. That' s just the way it is.

Thankfully we amateurs do not have to sell our stuff.

Regards

Georg

@mark: There are NO rumours that APX25 is coming back. There are just some people who spread their phantasies over the net, and therefore this topic comes up from time to time.

@john-paul: There is absolutely no connection between the terms "Orthopan" and "high contrast". If your Efkes came out too contrasty, you simply developed them too long. BTW, the Efkes have a very straight curve, so they profit from a compensating developer.

After the demise of APX25, several distributers claimed to have a substitute; mainly Efke/Adox25 and Rolleipan 25. Both films are very different from the APX, and they only have the "25ASA" in common with the Agfa film.

Regards

Georg

If "moisture spots" describes a partially rough or uneven surface of the film gelatine layer, then you will not be able to remove them. Try to wash one or two of the strips with water (and a wetting agent), and see if it helps at all, before you start a big project.

Stabilizer won't hurt, but it would make handling a little bit more difficult, because you should avoid contact of your skin with the stabilizer. It also might produce some fumes, if it ist formaldehyde-based.

I do not think that the "stabilzing effect" can be washed out by rewashing the negatives (AFAIK, it is a crosslinking of undeveloped dye), and the antifungal activity of the stabilizer is not absolutely necessary, if you store your negatives in a dry place (I guess you will do so in the future).

Reagrds

Georg

All right, this was my mistake. "Unability" seems to be the old-fashioned variant, which is incorrect (uncorrect? not correct? non-correct?) in modern english. Anyway, it is still widely used, also by native speakers (which I am not).

Regards

Georg

The complete thread is a typical example for the internet: 95% crap, 5% information. Plus a lot of people who talk about things they simply do not understand. Plus unability to understand complete paragraphs and sentences, not just picking out single key words. Plus unability to combine information from different sources, and critically weighing it.

Functional illiteracy is taking over.

Regards

Georg

I will never get the idea behind scanning a b/w film. If you scan, use a C-41-film like XP2; or even better, use a real color film, which allows you to simulate color filter effects at the post-processing stage.

Films like HP5 make sense only in traditional printing.

Regards

Georg

Thank you for these very informative pictures. After Kodak had sphipped thousands of free samples months ago, this is the first useful information on the new Portras I've found on the net.

It looks like the new Portra ist the first one to deliver good micro-contrast like the Fuji, an does not have the mushy over-smooth appearence that also plagues the Tmax100.

I also admit, that grain is NOT an indicator for limitation of resolution in a scan. Film grain is a mixture of big and small "dots", and also an uneven distribution of small "grains" can look like coarse grain in a scan. Actually, a high-resolution scan can be less grainy than a low-resolution one. Additionally, a high-resolution scan allows you to apply sharpening in a way, that mainly focusses on real detail, and does not cause that much increase in grain.

All in all, I have to say that the performance of the new 160VC is quite impressive.

Regards

Georg

A yellow filter would give only a very slight effect on blue skies, and is only sufficient if they sky is really deep-blue. Orange is better under usual conditions (e.g. to bring out clouds under slightly hazy conditions).

A polarizer is pure s**t with wide-angles, as the effect is of different strength over the field-of-view. Skip this option.

In my experience, "modern" films like Tmax100 and Delta100 have less blue sensitivity than "older" (classic) emulsions, so you might want to give them a try.

Regards

Georg

AF and MD are optically identical, so in theory it should work. But you never know if they took away or added 1/10 of a mm here or there. If you can find a vey cheap MD (maybe with worn-out mechanics) it is worth a try - and DIY is always fun.

(...but it can be difficult to remove the front ring, if you do not have the approbiate tools)

Regards

Georg

Justin,

APS-C is here to stay. This is not just true for Pentax, but for all manufacturers. I agree, bigger is always better when it comes to resolution, sensitivity, viewfinders etc., but the APS-C-sensor is a very good compromise, just as was the 36x24mm for film. Don't forget, 36x24 is not a nature's law, but emerged from a historical background, that does not play a role anymore for digital technology.

The main problem for FF sensors are wide-angle (and super-WA) lenses. As you might have noticed, the APS-C-wide angle leses are about the same size as comparable film wide-angles (e.g. compare 12-24 with 18-35). This is because especially wide-angles are more difficult to design for digital sensors than for film ("telecentric"). A digital-optimized full-frame fast super-wide-angle zoom would be an enormous beast.

Some professionals want FF, mainly because of the shallower depth-of-field, for portrait work and stuff like that. If the FF market grows, it will grow on the cost of medium format, not APS-C.

Pentax has always been very conservative when it came to big financial investments, and this might be the main reason, why they still exist. They did not burn money with prestige projects (like Olympus did with the E-1). Now they have a real winner in body-based SR-technology, which is perfectly aimed at the low-end and mid-market segement, which has always been Pentax' main target.

The reason why the teamed with Tokina is simple. One of the most difficult things for the companies during the conversion from analog to digital is the need for new lenses. Introducing a new lens (design phase and production start) is extremly expensive, so it makes sense for two relatively small players like Pentax and Tokina, to share costs. Many people prefer "original lenses" for quality reasons or to avoid future compatibility problems. Thanks to this deal, Pentax will have a full line-up of digital lenses in a few months for this customers. Not bad for a small company.

The guys at Pentax always acted reasonable and pragmatic, and that is why I am sure they will make cameras and lenses for some time to come (nobody knows how the world will look in 20 years).

Georg

I find the 1/10th examples quite interesting. Without comparison, many people would consider the non-SR shot as "acceptabel sharp", but the SR-example shows, that it can be much better.

So, it might be a good idea to leave the SR "on" all the time, even when you think you do not absolutely need it. According to Pentax, the SR conumes very few energy, and adds no shutter lag.

Regards

Georg

C'mon, guys, use your brains. Why should Pentax release K110D, K100D, and K10D, and a couple of new lenses (co-esigned with Tokina), when they plan to leave camera business in the next 3 months? Sony moves into dSLR, so does Panasonic, so did Olympus, and Pentax should quit?

Journalists write a lot of sh*t, and I am sure the guy who made the original article on the investors thoughts, does not know a P/S from a dSLR.

Georg

Check the Minolta websites for the warranty issue. Depending on your country, Minolta might have "outsourced" the servicing to either Sony or another company.

Anyway, as the company Minolta (or KonicaMinolta) still exists, they have to cover the warranty. There would be a problem only if Minolta had gone bancrupt and stopped existing. But as they just cancelled their camera division, they still have to take care of the warranty (or to pay someone else).

Regards

Georg