On Apr 28, 2005, at 2:15 PM, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
I was looking through the list of available film @ B&H this afternoon and
was dismayed to discover that the only slow speed print film that's
available is Iford Pan F. I didn't see a sindle color print film with a
speed less than 100, and there were only a handful of slide films at those
lower ratings as well. What a distressing turn of events.
With the advent of fast emulsions demonstrating grain and acutance which are equal to better than the older slow emulsions, sales of slow emulsions dropped to an unprofitable level ... so manufacturers stopped making them.
ND filters work great for "throttling down" film and sensor to levels where long exposures and open apertures work great. You get the same quality as you would with slow film.
Does anyone know of some slow speed color print film that's available.
Bruce not too long ago introduced me to Konica Impressa and Godfrey just
posted a couple of pics made with Agfa Ultra 50. Both of those films would
have been good choices for a small project I'd like to continue with.
I still have a few rolls of 35mm Agfa Ultra 50 (and quite a bit of Agfa APX 50) in the freezer. If anyone would like them for a project, let me know.
What's also annoying, though not to me personally as yet, is the lack of
slow speed ratings on the digi cameras, with, it seems, most not offering
anything below 100 and quite a few not offering anything below 200. Is
there some technical reason for this?
Most small sensor cameras (for instance, from my experience, the Panasonic FZ10, Konica Minolta A2, etc) have a native sensitivity in the ISO 50-64-100 range and do their best work when locked to those settings. Even with those I often needed an ND filter to achieve the results I wanted.
The Sony sensor in the *ist D/DS has a native sensitivity of ISO 200 ... making it artificially slower would degrade its performance. The Canon sensor in the 10D/20D, etc has a native sensitivity of ISO 100 ... etc.
The solution to all of this is good ND filters. I keep a B+W type 106 ND filter around for when I need to use a seriously low sensitivity (something like 6-8 stops, can't remember off hand) ... ISO 3 anyone? :-)
Godfrey
