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Showing posts with the label film photography

What's the cheapest B&W 120 film available?

Not sure why I'm even looking, I've got plenty. Maybe so I can advise students at my school? In any case, I found myself looking to see what was the cheapest B&W 120 film I could find. In general, I think there's no such thing as a bad film.There are films that are easier to use and process, there are films with various traits that may not be suited for intended use. But I'm no longer interested in the sharpest finest grain films. I used to shoot Tech Pan and Agfapan 25 in the 1980's. Now I look at the prints and negs and, some are pretty nice. But on the whole they are too contrasty. I switched to ORWO NP20 (and later NP22 in the USA) and much prefer those negs. After ORWO stopped making consumer films, I moved on to Acros. Fuji Acros was a beautiful film, with wonderful tones as well as fine grain and minimal reciprocity failure issues. So today I'm going to do some searching and put the results up here. Please note, I'm in the US, so it's US suppl

From the Archive: Obsolete Film Data Sheet Scans - ORWO NP films

ORWO Neopan Film Data Sheet Long ago, in a galaxy far away- well actually it was 1987 in what was the German Democratic Republic, I began a love affair, albeit with a film. Traveling on a day visa for the first time to the GDR with my friend Christof and his sister, I paid the DM5 for a day visa and exchanged the mandatory DM20 for the local currency, Mark der DDR. Though M20 was roughly worth US$8 it was hard to spend. The stereotypes of the East Block were that of empty shops and long lines. But at least in the capital of the GDR, neither of those issues were apparent. What was apparent, was that the prices of things were drastically different. Many of the day-to-day things that consumers would want were much less expensive. I ate and drank far more than I should have. If I remember correctly, a beer at a sit down cafe on "the Alex" was M0,70 (ca. US$ 0.30) or so. I had perhaps the best ice-cream in my life from a street vendor for a few cents (and later again a