And so I have arrived to the second Svema film brief review, the 100 ASA. As already told here, I have bought some 4 types of film from Astrum in Ukraine. This review here follows the one on Svema 400 ASA.
I chose to use an Olympus XA2, this camera is an excellent appraiser of film destined to be tested, as I have found more than once. The great lens and camera automatic functions makes it a brilliant shooter. This XA2 is always in my backpack, when traveling. Ideal street shooter, really beautiful results and razor sharp lens.
This cassette is also presenting some visual issues. The top roundel that screws onto the top of the cassette is not properly locked, because the felt thing is in the way. It starts to look that all these reloadable cassettes suffer from the same affliction, which makes me wonder if it will be worth it to re-use the cassettes to reload.
I will attempt to reload one such cassette in the near future, with a strip of cheap film, just to see if it’s damaging the negative. That said, the first cassette processed (Svema 400, see link above) had the same issue, but it kept the light out, to my surprise.
So I went and shot the film, in both day light and indoors with ambient light. Processed it in Kodak’s D76, 1+1 dilution, for 11 mins, stand dev, with 4 inversions at start and a two or three swirls at mid-time. The developer was a strong yellow when poured out, but the stop bath was pretty clear with just a hint of a yellow-ish tint. The colour was very close to that of the Mountain Dew carbonated drink, if you know it. Fixed as usual, washed thoroughly in distilled water, Adoflo at the end. And all this above was done with my new Jobo 1510 replacement tank.
The negative came out very transparent, and looking at it after it was hanged up to dry, resembled the Agfa Ortho or the Technical Pan, clear base, with almost no greys, just white and black. I am writing this when the film is still drying, so scanning is yet to happen. However, I have taken a photograph with my digital Nikon, just to get you an idea of what the film looks like, as it hangs to dry.
After drying, the film got a greenish tint, which baffles me. Anyone, any idea?
Anyways, the film came out a bit thin, with less contrast than expected. There are some frames which look ok-ish, but I guess the light was better. I believe it’s the developer, less aggressive than others, such as Rodinal. I will process the next roll in strips for testing with Adonal and HC110. A test will be done with D76, only this time with some longer development time. I’ll get there, no worries 🙂 .
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