Film and Darkroom

119 Stories, Experiments, Workflows, Reviews

Adox CMS 20 II: An Ultra-High Resolution Film Review
Tested With Adotech IV and a 400-Megapixel Scan
January 10, 2025
In this review, I share my experience shooting and processing this film with the specialized Adotech CMS IV developer as well as the non-specialized Ilford DD-X, discuss its technical specifications, and share the results of my attempt to produce a 400-megapixel scan (the absolute maximum I’m capable with my current hardware and software).
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Pushing Ilford HP5+ to ISO 100,000
Samples, Recipe, Discussion, and Development Times
January 8, 2025
This article is a follow-up to yesterday’s experiment with pulling HP5+ to ISO 3; whereas the former was fairly easy to do, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you try what I’m about to share with you here. Still, this resource comes with all the techniques and recipes necessary to replicate the experiment, as well as suggested times for developing HP5+ at EI 12800, 25600, and 51200.
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Pulling Ilford HP5+ to ISO 3
Samples, Recipe, Discussion, and Development Times
January 7, 2025
Ilford HP5+ is a ninety-year-old¹ black-and-white film known for its versatility, sharpness, and controlled response to various development methods. Many photographers love to push-process it and occasionally pull-process. Yet, to my knowledge, no one has pull-processed it to this extreme; thus, this may be the first time anyone has ever shared the technique and the results with the HP5+ shot as if it’s an ISO 3 film.
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A Unique Look? Harman Phoenix 200 in E-6 With Flash

November 21, 2024
Typically, Harman Phoenix is processed with C-41 chemistry, but I decided to go a different route and try E-6. Why? I was after something perhaps more unique — a shift in colour that would add extra character and depth to a project I was working on (more about that later). The idea was to use the film to make it feel less like a straightforward documentary and more like a visual statement.
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Kodak Vision 3 50D 5203/7203 Film Review
Shot as Stills and Developed in C-41
November 12, 2024
Kodak Vision 3 50D 5203/7203 colour negative film was designed for movie cameras. But in the mid-2010s, CineStill popularized its use in SLRs and rangefinders with a remjet-less version, the 50D. As the availability of ECN-2 developers increased, the original Kodak (non-CineStill) version of this film also began to gain popularity amongst us still photographers. In this review, I’ll cover all the technical specifications, share samples, and review the various ways of getting hold of and developing this film.
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Film Ferrania Orto 50 Film Review
High-Contrast and Orthochromaticism (With and Without a Green Filter)
November 5, 2024
Film Ferrania’s Orto 50 is a newly reissued (2023)¹ orthochromatic black-and-white film by the famous Italian film factory. It features fine grain, high contrast, and blue light sensitivity (which makes it blind to the red colours). Orto 50 shares its fine grain, strong contrast, and some development times with Film Ferrania’s first product, P30 — but it’s not the same film.
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Photographers Are Terrible at Identifying Most B&W Films
573 Participants Guessed Correctly Just 37.6% of the Time
October 28, 2024
What guides your choice of black-and-white film? Is it the contrast, the grain, or something else? Last year, I built a game, “What The Film ?!” with Daren and Yvonne. It randomized black-and-white photos and asked players to guess what film they were shot on. This weekend, I brushed through the entries and found a few interesting stats about our understanding of black-and-white films… One of which is our apparent inability to identify most of them correctly.
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Lomography Color Negative 800 Film Review
A Portra in Disguise?
October 18, 2024
Lomography Color Negative 800 film is a high-speed medium-high saturation film sold in triple packs of 35mm and 120 rolls. It features accurate colour reproduction and fine grain. Though Lomography does not reveal the exact origins of this film, it’s most likely manufactured by Kodak — but it’s not the same as Portra 800 — as the controlled experiments suggest.
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Fujifilm Fujicolor PRO 400H Film Review
Discontinued but Not Forgotten
September 27, 2024
Fujifilm Fujicolor Pro 400H is a pro-grade colour negative film with excellent dynamic range and unique colour reproduction thanks to its fourth colour layer. In this review, I’ll cover my experience with this film in 35mm and medium format, share a few samples, and discuss its technical properties.
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Kiki Pan 320 Film Review
Meow 🐾
September 26, 2024
Kiki Pan 320 is a medium-speed black-and-white film by a Hong Kong analogue photography distributor, Camera Film Photo. Kiki Pan is a German-made emulsion packed in a super-cute box with its DX-coded canister and negatives featuring a design inspired by the shop’s resident cat, Kiki. 🐾
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Kosmo Foto Agent Shadow 400 Film Review
Tested at ISO 6400 and Box Speed in Various Developers, Featuring My Impossibly-Cute Puppy!
September 25, 2024
I was one of the project’s original backers, which gave me a chance to buy a “Briefcase Box” pack with five rolls and a delightful graphic novel by My Mate Does Art. Alas, by the time I got to writing this review, the film was no longer available for sale. Not even on eBay. So this review is more of a retrospective, useful to those who still have a roll somewhere. This film is said to be technically identical to Kentmere 400, so you can try the tricks in this article with that film for similar results.
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Agfa Ortho 25 Expired B&W Film Review
Also Available Fresh as Rollei Ortho 25
September 16, 2024
Agfa Ortho 25 is the vintage predecessor to the modern Rollei Ortho 25 — a fine-grained, slow-speed orthochromatic film for black-and-white photography. In this review, I’ll share a brief history of this emulsion, explain its technical properties, and share some results along with my opinions about using and developing this film more than twenty years past expiration.
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Kodak Gold 100/Kodak Bright Sun Film Review
An Affordable Expired Film Stock With Undeniably Warm Tones
September 7, 2024
Kodak Gold 100 is an affordable expired film. It features vivid, medium-saturation vintage colours with chunky grain and no significant tonal shifts despite most supplies having expired 10+ years ago.
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Testing the New Cinema Shorts 50D and 250D Films
August 8, 2024
50D and 250D are cinema’s most technologically advanced photochemical products, with ultra-fine grain and flattering, flexible colour reproduction. Cinema Shorts are these same emulsions re-packaged from movie reels (the only way Kodak distributes this film) into recycled metal 35mm film canisters. In this article, I’m sharing a few of my first Cinema Shorts test shots (all developed in standard C-41 chemicals at home).
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Lomochrome Color’92 Pushed +2 Stops to EI1600
In Sun-Drenched Montréal
August 7, 2024
In the shade, the temperature hovered at 33℃/92℉, whereas the sun-lit stone that garnished sidewalks could quickly cook an egg. It felt better to hide under a tree, underground, or under the cover of night skies. To get all that on one roll of Lomography’s new Lomochrome Color’92, I decided to push it +2 stops until it became an ISO 1600 film. These are the samples, thoughts, and advice after the fact.
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Kodak Pro Image 100 Pushed +2 Stops to EI400
While Extreme Couponing With Flair Air
August 6, 2024
Kodak Pro Image 100 was sold exclusively in Asian and South American markets until recently. It may be my favourite colour-negative film. In this article, I recall the story of my hectic trip across Canada and the learnings from developing this ISO 100 film as if it were an ISO 400 film.
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Seaside Camping With Fujifilm Fujichrome Provia 400
Making the Best of a Very Expired Slide Film
August 3, 2024
Fujichrome Provia 400 is the first in Fujifilm’s series of exceptional high-speed slide films. It was made in the late ‘90s/early ‘00s. Being the first of its kind, Provia 400 did not boast the fine grain of the 400X (RMS 8 — exceptionally small!) nor did it feature the fine colour reproduction and dynamic range of the 400F. But it was very close in quality and looks to those films.
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Lomography Fantôme Kino 8 Film Review
A Slow Black-and-White Film for Sunny Bokeh, High Contrast, and Fine Grain
July 8, 2024
Lomography Fantôme Kino 8 is a low-ISO black-and-white motion picture film sold in 35mm only. This film shows exceptionally fine grain, which it typically renders in high contrast. I was able to get very natural-looking images out of it when I developed it at home with my solution of Rodinal 1+50. This film has also taught me things I’ve never expected about my old Ultron lens.
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All the C-41 ISO 800 Colour Films, Compared
Portra 800 vs. FunSaver 800 vs. Lomo 800 vs. Aurora 800
June 24, 2024
There’s seemingly some choice when it comes to high-speed daylight-balanced colour-negative film. But is it all branding? We compare all the ISO 800 films we could find side-by-side to see if there’s any actual difference once developed and scanned.
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Harman Phoenix 200 — New Colour Film Review
The Most Important Film Photography Product of 2024
June 8, 2024
Harman Phoenix 200 is the most important film photography product of 2024. It opened the doors to a new colour film facility at a British factory which has been continuously supplying us with photochemistry for over 140 years.
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