spiderbraids

Given March-April is peak summertime around these parts, and having previously tried Kodak Colorplus, I decided to get Kodak's other ISO 200 film, Kodak Gold (THB 360 or about USD 11 at last check) and took it through its paces in my Kodak M35, taking in the last days of the uni employee sports festival, followed by student sports :-) Plus flowers, and even a little bit of stargazing at the end as well :-) Analogue Wonderland gushes plenty about its versatility, and though I mainly aimed it at shots taken outside, I did manage to get some okay shots indoors too (albeit still looking slightly underexposed, even with the wide aperture of flash mode) Let's see what turned out :-)

( Good as Gold )

Vibe 400 is the cheapest B&W at my usual lab, sold alongside other speeds of similarly cheap Fomapan (THB 220, USD 6.5)... which is just as well, since it's apparently Fomapan :-) Since this roll was in my Kodak M35 during university employee sports, most of this roll comes from sports, and as expected from a cheap film, indoor shots needed flash to be remotely presentable (That said, one of the indoor venues does have plenty of light to make film photos work to some extent, and many of the photos are from there :-))

( A sporty Vibe on the cheap )

As mentioned last time, I got two rolls of Orwo film from my usual lab earlier in 2024, and just before finishing up the NC500 in half-frame, I started shooting the NC400 with the Kodak M35 after New Year's :-) Its (supposedly) "cooler" tone aside, it seems to have the same graininess and reduced level of sensitivity as its lower-numbered sibling, as I got 30 scans out of 36, and many of the scans that did come out were quite underexposed, even with flash :-\

( New year, new roll )

My last post for 2024, with another roll of Double X (aka Kodak 5222), this time full-frame in the Kodak M35, from October to December 2024 (Details about Double X here) Not much to say except that I was hoping that the ability to set a wider aperture on the M35 might improve some of the indoor pictures... Not so much, as it turns out, and early morning/late afternoon heading into winter time also turns out to be somewhat suboptimal for this film

( Double X's second act )

Been a while since my last set of analog snaps, but I have a good reason :-) Late last year, the UK's Harman Technology (makers of Ilford and Kentmere) made quite a splash when they announced they were making a brand-new ISO 200 color film in-house called Harman Phoenix... I managed to get me a first-batch roll of Phoenix from a different store than my usual in January for THB 480 (about USD 14), but only started shooting it in late May and only finished in late August in my Kodak M35, with me going a whole week or so between shots in some cases (esp. towards the end when I was kept from taking the camera to some potential opportunities to finish the roll :-\) What made it rather hard to shoot this roll was that despite the nominal ISO 200, it's actually less sensitive than that, so with that in mind, I kept my eyes out for sunny days (less common around these parts between May and August due to rains), and made a point to take photos with the wide aperture ("flash") mode... Turns out it pretty much only works outdoors :-\ but with the proper amount of light, it produces pretty vibrant and contrasty colors :-) (It's been compared to cross-processed slide film, and in fact some have even cross-processed it as slide film :-))

( Rise like a phoenix )

Late last year (October or thereabouts), I saw my usual lab selling Fuji 400 for THB420 (about USD11), so not having shot Fuji in a while, I grabbed a box... Turns out that Fuji has been outsourcing its film to the states, likely to Kodak, their long-time rivals in the film scene (! Also, check out this Reddit comment suggesting only subtle differences from Kodak's own Ultramax) On top of that, while I was shooting the US Fuji came bad news regarding Japanese-made Fuji: Superia X-Tra 400 being discontinued, effective immediately :-\ (and even when it was available, it was going for THB550 [USD 15!])

Also, although I shot this roll half-frame with my Kodak H35, when I got this roll processed, it ended up getting scanned as full-frame diptychs instead of half-frames: I was buying a couple more rolls at the same time and the total price was getting pretty expensive as it was, so I didn't notice that they hadn't included the half-frame split surcharge; that said, I did write on the processing envelope that it was half-frames, so I would have expected them to recognize that I wanted them split, especially since they didn't ask like the previous times I'd sent in such rolls :-\ Similar to the ones developed at the ECN2 lab, it results in some of the frames looking overexposed or underexposed when the other half of the frame was shot in different conditions :-\ Anyways, let's check out the pictures...

( The case of the American Fuji )

Last year's uni personnel sports fest was held while I had B&W in both of my cameras, but this year, I had a Vision3 500T that I bought for THB210 last March just before it went up in price to THB230 in my Kodak M35 during most of the event :-) While the pictures taken indoors were decent to somewhat marginal, they're much better than the ones taken last year... And looking at my picks, this is almost the entire roll, skipping a selfie plus a few blurry or badly framed shots :-)

( Oh, wow... color sports )

Time for another non-regular B&W film brand, and this time it's Bergger Pancro 400 from France :-) Purchased alongside the Agfa and Rollei, it was the most expensive of the films, at THB333 (about USD 9) According to their site, it's made with two different kinds of salt for wide exposure latitude... However, my shots do not seem to have borne the exposure latitude claims out, as between losing a few frames at the start after the camera (Kodak M35) dropped out of my pocket, causing the back to open (only shot one frame at that point, "thankfully"), snapping (at least) one shot with the aperture switch left in the middle (!) and this film not particularly doing great in the shade, even with the larger aperture in flash mode (though without actually using flash; not sure it would have helped) I got a grand total of 27 scans (!)

(ETA: When I got the film back from the lab, they returned it as a canister like half-frames because there were so many dark frames they were unsure of where to cut)

( Bergger time )

From my previous roll I noted that I bought a roll of converted aerial Agfa film as part of the same batch as that previous roll... Well, here it is: Rollei Retro 400S in my Kodak H35 :-) The price was THB288 according to the confirmation email when I bought it, but looking at the price now it's gone up to THB340 :-\

( Going Retro with Rollei )

Time for another roll of B&W film beyond the usual suspects... This time around it's Agfa APX 400, purchased for THB 288 (USD 7.9) as part of a batch of 3 rolls, shot with Kodak M35 between September and October 2023 :-) Agfa used to be one of the major color film manufacturers in the analog era, and kept selling Vista (though produced by Fuji) all the way until 2018... These days, the only Agfa-branded films remaining are Copex Rapid, APX 100, and APX 400 (Agfa also make aerial film, which other companies have converted for 35mm use... and I bought a roll of converted aerial Agfa film as part of the same batch, which I'm currently using in my H35 :-)) According to Analogue Wonderland it's "a relatively simple film, it is one that you can throw into your camera and shoot fun things without worrying too much about the results because the emulsion is so flexible." Most of the results seem to agree with this assessment :-)

( B&W autumn vibes )