Back in June 2018, the Ferrania Folks hoped to be in continuous production by Fall

[Thomas71]

Useless? From my first roll of the Alpha, at box speed in D-76:

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I don't think so...

Nice shot; in particular n.2 is well exposed. N.1 in my monitor seems underexposed. I think that you could have achieved the same result with an Ilford FP4.
I've only tried P30 once, souped in XTOL, and I got acceptable result only exposing @ 25. Otherwise too much contrast and lack of detail in the shadows.
Here in Italy P30 costs 50% more than FP4..

 

[pbromaghin]

It's a pity that Ferrania is not in condition to widen the range of film offer.

We don't know this to be the case. They, at least, claim it is not true.

From their website:

"We are excited for the rest of 2023.​

We have more products nearly ready to announce and even more planned. Make sure you are following us in all your favorite places and be ready for more good news in the coming months."

 

[pbromaghin]

Nice shot; in particular n.2 is well exposed. N.1 in my monitor seems underexposed. I think that you could have achieved the same result with an Ilford FP4.
I've only tried P30 once, souped in XTOL, and I got acceptable result only exposing @ 25. Otherwise too much contrast and lack of detail in the shadows.
Here in Italy P30 costs 50% more than FP4..

Thank you. Number 2 the best keeper out of 4 rolls. Yes, number 1 is underexposed, but it is miraculously the look I intended. FP4 and HP5 are my normal go-to films for their great latitude that helps cover for my chronic exposure errors. For me, p30 and PanF, both difficult and demanding beasts, are competing for that other niche, with a slight advantage to PanF. Mainly due to lack of skill, I rarely go there.

 

[drkhalsa]

Yes, number 1 is underexposed, but it is miraculously the look I intended.

Whatever my opinion is worth, I think #1 is the best of what you posted. I like its mystery and mood.

 

[Hassasin]

P30 is an expensive piece of film, 120 will be no different, and that is where sustaining business is in question. If P30 were price competitive and below Kodak and Fuji, it would at least be costing similarly to what FP4 does, then you could think of some demand shifting and support higher production levels. I don't know the numbers, but I can't see how what they produce at prices they sell can be a long term fix.

I will always say - wish theme the best, but to me P30 is not worth the cost at all, and I know I am no in minority saying this. If "unique" were not part of the game, it would have probably been gone by now.

 

[warden]

P30 is an expensive piece of film, 120 will be no different, and that is where sustaining business is in question. If P30 were price competitive and below Kodak and Fuji, it would at least be costing similarly to what FP4 does, then you could think of some demand shifting and support higher production levels.

Perhaps a better comparison would be slower film than fp4? P30 is 50 cents more than Pan-F if you limit yourself to B&H, and 50 cents less than Pan-F if you get it from the FPP store. They’re both lower volume, slow specialty films, and price competitive in the US anyway.

I doubt they’ll become price competitive with the commodity films that are made in much larger quantities though. I think their bag is going to be unusual films. Time will tell.

 

[cmacd123]

P30 is an expensive piece of film, 1 If P30 were price competitive and below Kodak and Fuji, I don't know the numbers, but I can't see how what they produce at prices they sell can be a long term fix.

I would say if you want a slightly less expensive film, Look at Foma (Arista Ultra) or even Kentmere. The P30 that we are seeing is at least as competent as the major brands, (perhaps more so as the crew who is making it likly includes their Emusion Guru) and does offer a Unique look. It remains to be seen if Photographers will want to use the Ortho film, and if they do if they perfer it to the Ilford Ortho. they might have come out with this in experimenting with the dyes they will need to make an eventual Colour film. OR it might just be something that the head of the project wanted for their own Movie Making.

the Volume is not anywhere near as high as some of the other makes. They did say that they produced 4000 rolls of useable film while getting their finishing line up and running. I did buy a couple of batches of film out of that and assuming that the Serial Numbers are just HEX numbers, all the ones with bar codes I received so far are from the first 4000 rolls. (hard to say how many rolls were made using outside help in the earlier series) Sometime in the spring, I will try to get some more to see if the codes climb higher.

 

[Agulliver]

Ferrania Film = useless film so far...

That's very strange. I've managed to use a few rolls quite happily. As have others.

"It's not of use to me" /= "It's useless"

 

[foc]

In all my years of photography (48) I have never come across a useless film.
There were some I didn't like, but never useless.

 

[Yashica]

In all my years of photography (48) I have never come across a useless film.
There were some I didn't like, but never useless.

I sign that.

Happy easter !

 

[Thomas71]

That's very strange. I've managed to use a few rolls quite happily. As have others.

"It's not of use to me" /= "It's useless"

ok, I've used an extreme expression defining "useless" Ferrania's current production.
My thouth is that Ferrania has so far produced a film (P30) with very particular and specific characteristics, with very limited fields of use. It's a semi-ortho very low speed film... more expensive than a Ilford Ortho+; I don't feel that Ilford Ortho+ is a best-seller; a beautiful film for landscape, but low sales volume.
I hope to see a more verstile film from Ferrania, able to make Ferrania a succesful company!!
Happy Easter from Italy
Thomas

 

[koraks]

I hope to see a more verstile film from Ferrania, able to make Ferrania a succesful company!!

Thomas, I see your reasoning, but it's possible that Ferrania decided to do the opposite for pretty much the same reasons you offered...i.e., if they were to offer a more usual panchromatic 100 or 400 speed B&W film, they'd have to compete head on with a variety of existing products. It's difficult to eek out a niche in that spectrum, with pretty much everything being covered already. There's high-tech, high-performance TMAX and Delta films, good quality middle-of-the-road HP5/FP4 and a variety of additional brands (Kentmere, Adox, Bergger etc.) and there's a bottom end of the market as well (e.g. Foma, Shanghai). If Ferrania would drop into this landscape, they'd likely have to try and sell a product that at best rivals Ilford HP/FP (& Kentmere and other Harman) films, but likely closer to a TMAX price point given the high R&D costs and reduced economies of scale of a tiny party like Ferrania. It's quite likely that they deliberately chose to occupy less crowded niches. Especially their Orto offering fits that bill. P30 I still see as a stepping stone towards their long-anticipated color offering and I always assumed it to be the kind of emulsion technology they're planning to use in combination with dye technology for color.

 

[Yashica]

Well, Fujifilm just announced a new 400 ISO Color Film, so let's hope for the best with legendary Ferrania. I've to say also, this is a special low production and hence therefore expensive film, not for the masses.

Happy easter, and good light !

 

[Agulliver]

I agree that Ferrania have chosen to offer P30 for sale in large part because there is nothing else quite like it on the market. There's little point in offering a genuine panchromatic film at 100, 200, 400, 1600 or higher speed. P30 Alpha was the film that they used to test that everything was fine with their chemistry and coating. They then realised they liked it, and that there might be a market for P30 which could further fund the company in it's next endeavours.

I also agree it's not an everyday film. There will be people who have no use for it. There will be those of us who do have a place for it in our bag of film. It's very good at what it does, and Film Ferrania aren't able to sell film at 8 dollarpounds a roll. There would be little point selling something equivalent to HP5 or Tri-X at a higher price.

Film Ferrania always aimed for niches. Kodak, Foma, Harman and Fuji between them have the market for pancrhomatic B&W film covered.

 

[warden]

I agree that Ferrania have chosen to offer P30 for sale in large part because there is nothing else quite like it on the market….

Ditto. I think they’re on a good course and they seem to know what they are doing. The future is looking good for Ferrania.

 

[Nzoomed]

Well I just visited their website and discovered their new Orto film is available, great to see another product offering, I guess this means that their factory is in a pretty good state for coating film.
Fingers crossed their colour films will be available next!
Also looks like kickstarter rewards will be credited too.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Well I just visited their website and discovered their new Orto film is available, great to see another product offering, I guess this means that their factory is in a pretty good state for coating film.
Fingers crossed their colour films will be available next!
Also looks like kickstarter rewards will be credited too.

Orto is unavailable in Canada or the US until sometime after June.

 

[pentaxuser]

P30 is an expensive piece of film, 120 will be no different, and that is where sustaining business is in question.

It now appears to have a competitor as well in 120 in the form of Foma Ortho should it decide to use that format.

pentaxuser

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Competition is good. I do want to give P30 in 120 a go!

 

[cmacd123]

It now appears to have a competitor as well in 120 in the form of Foma Ortho should it decide to use that format.

pentaxuser

A competitor to the ORTO, not P30.

 

[pentaxuser]

A competitor to the ORTO, not P30.

P30 looks pretty ortho to me and from what I have gathered from a good number of others in that very long thread on P30 it appears to be the same to them. Unless Greg Davis has made a major mistake in his test of it he reached pretty much the same conclusion or so it seems to me

pentaxuser

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

P30 looks pretty ortho to me and from what I have gathered from a good number of others in that very long thread on P30 it appears to be the same to them. Unless Greg Davis has made a major mistake in his test of it he reached pretty much the same conclusion or so it seems to me

pentaxuser

From what I've seen, it's behaves very much like an ortho film. As long as Ferrania doesn't publish P90's spectral sensitivity graph, we will never know for certain.

 

[Nzoomed]

Competition is good. I do want to give P30 in 120 a go!

Agreed and P30 is a totally different kettle of fish compared to all other B&W films on the market today.

Im sure Orto is going to be a unique product too once that is distributed which is not too far away.

 

[cmacd123]

It looks like the elves have been working on the Film Ferrania Shopify site. https://usa.filmferrania.com/ I have been checking every month or so.

some loping videos are part of the theme, showing glimpses of the production tests (have to be testing, the lights were on!) the pictures seem to confirm that they are indeed producing their own cassettes from Flat metal. Also showing both P30 and Ortho cassettes running down a packing like.

On the other hand some of the text is in italian. and the "shop" page shows as "No collections are available"

lets all cross our fingers and our toes for more news. one thing that comes out is that they are film Fanatics

 

[foc]

It looks like the elves have been working on the Film Ferrania Shopify site

When I used the site, I found some of the links/buttons lead to "page not found" or just didn't work.

It's a Shopify platform they are using, which means it should be simple to fix these problems. It doesn't create a good impression that they don't check their own site.

I don't wish to sound pessimistic but if they can't get this right then......................