Fomapan 200 in HC110

jseffel said:

Not blaming the film. But I would like to get good shadows with HC110 and the massive dev chart recipe didn't work out. Next roll I will cut in half and try Paranol S and HC110 with the dilution / time mentioned in the thread and se how it goes. I've taken duplicate shots - one at EI100 and one at EI200 so I can compare.

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Makes sense. The following thread over at rangefinderforum might be of interest - Foma 200@400EI in 35mm from the perspective of a Tri-X user:

www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=171421

There's a few people chiming in with HC110 recipes if you scroll down. Good luck!

I have shot around 200 rolls of fomapan 200 in 35mm.
In 120 just abour 30 rolls, it is defective, too bad. Havent had a single flawless roll. Nothing to do with softness.
In 35mm its great
For me it works at Iso 100, developed in rodinal 1+50 for 8 minutes at around 21 celsius.
In 5x7 it is great too.
Had some good experience with pyrocat hd when shot in high contrast daylight.
Enjoy

albireo said:

Makes sense. The following thread over at rangefinderforum might be of interest - Foma 200@400EI in 35mm from the perspective of a Tri-X user:

www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=171421

There's a few people chiming in with HC110 recipes if you scroll down. Good luck!

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Sorry to dig up such an old thread - but I don't suppose you can remember this thread? Rangefinder forum links don't seem to work at all these days and I cannot find this thread for the life of me.

sasij said:

Sorry to dig up such an old thread - but I don't suppose you can remember this thread? Rangefinder forum links don't seem to work at all these days and I cannot find this thread for the life of me.

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You're right it appears to have gone. I did notice rangefinder.com went through a long period of downtime followed by a substantial redesign. I hope the historical threads from the old site are not lost forever. A quick google search yields nothing wrt the thread I was referencing, sadly.

Let us know if you find something that works. I've given up on the 200. The 100 and 400 are beautiful films in 35mm, and I actually like the grain. But the w/ the 200, nothing I've tried will give shadow detail, and it's so much easier to shoot the other 2 films.

It may be that I actually don't like the look of the 200. Every example on the web looks different, and none of them look like my prints. It's such a different type of look, can't quite figure out what to develop it in or shoot w/ it.

I've tried to make several Foma films work well, but I couldn't. And I use some of their great papers long ago.
Apart from quality control, and apart from the three problems stated by Drew Wiley in post 16 (low speed, low gamma rise, low reciprocity) all leading most of us to wish more from their films and their tone, I feel as if at Foma they talked about ISO in a different way than Kodak and Ilford do: maybe Foma film designers really stretch things and don't tell us, when they print box speeds on their films, they talk about an ISO that reaches higher contrast -at box speed- than best films in the world do.
Anyway, I think Foma100 can be well used (at 25-50 for best tonality depending on light and developers) for tripod photography: in that case, tripod, their peculiar behaviour is a pain only for some scenes and types of light.
But for handheld photography, Foma films are always clearly inferior to Kodak and Ilford films.
In my case, I use ISO400 at EI640 and at EI1000 for soft light, and all ISO400 films by Ilford and Kodak give great tone at those speeds for wet printing, but Foma400 can't do that with best tone and best grain. The difference is huge.
Sometimes Foma400 is the only film available here, because it's the cheapest fast film in the world and it's commonly repackaged for students, so I tried to make it work well just in case, but it was a pain every time I tried. And frames with quality control problems were common all the time, in different recent years.

I also tried to make good use of their ISO200 film.
It doesn't push well to 400, and its tone is poor at 200.
So, if EI100-80 is the best option for that film, TMax100 and Delta100 are much better films.
Even Kentmere100 is a much better film too.
Commerce interests are sometimes too close to illegal procedures IMO.

sasij said:

Sorry to dig up such an old thread - but I don't suppose you can remember this thread? Rangefinder forum links don't seem to work at all these days and I cannot find this thread for the life of me.

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By any chance could it be found using the Wayback Machine - Internet Archive?

momus said:

Let us know if you find something that works. I've given up on the 200. The 100 and 400 are beautiful films in 35mm, and I actually like the grain. But the w/ the 200, nothing I've tried will give shadow detail, and it's so much easier to shoot the other 2 films.

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I do not know Foma 200 in 135, but I've gone back to shooting Foma 200 in 120 in earnest. With the newest batches, any issues with hairline parallel scratches I had experienced since about 2019 have now largely gone. It is an absolutely stunning film, with (as someone else in the thread found) a much longer linear portion of the exposure/density function than the 100 and 400, I've found. Not to mention the spectral response which is quite traditional (think old Tri-X) and extremely different from Foma 400, which is strongly red-sensitive and which I find needs the right scene and colour distribution to work.

Here's a link to a comparison between Trix and Foma200 in 35mm by someone who is well known in this forum (sadly, he had to delete his account following less than stellar treatment by some of the armchair photographers in here)

(actual comparison starts 3:33)

Notice that he uses D76 exclusively for his tests. I (personally, so based on my metering choices and less so on my development choices) have not found any special issues with blocked shadows. However, I try to strictly follow the manufacturer's recommendations and stick to the developers they tested, mainly Fomadon Excel and Fomadon LQN and have not had problems of note. How do you meter and which developer have you tried? I'd get a couple of rolls and a bottle of Fomadon LQN and see how you get on.

momus said:

It may be that I actually don't like the look of the 200. Every example on the web looks different, and none of them look like my prints.

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I sympathise with the frustration, but may I ask why you'd expect other people's examples to look like your prints? Your prints are the effect of a number of non linear transformations of the signal recorded on the negative onto the paper, a function of chosen exposure, development, variance in measurement errors, variance in operator errors, light source, paper response and much more. Other people, including those who bother to post examples or youtube videos online to try to offer some real help to the community, will have applied their own set of (voluntary+involuntary) transformations. I haven't personally found other people's experiences with film extremely useful (unless there are some elements of scientific reproducibility, like in the series of videos by the Naked Photographer suggested above) so I only trust my own judgement of a film in my own chain.

albireo said:

largely gone

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That doesn't sound too promising to be honest...

koraks said:

That doesn't sound too promising to be honest...

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I've never been brave enough to try Fomapan 120 film.

For better shadow details on Fomapan 200, expose it at EI100, and avoid contrasty scenes. It's much more contrasty than other similar speed film like TMAX or FP4.

jseffel said:

So... I've just bought 10 Fomapan 200 films. I've deleloped two. The first one I shot at EI200 but I think I used too cold water. The second one I shot at EI160. I used HC110 with dilution 1:63 for 9mins. Agiated during the first 30 secs and then for 10 secs every minute. The first one lacked a lot of shadow detail (unusable), the second one lacked contrast and was grainy.

Should I expose it at EI100, use another dilution / time? Dont use HC110 at all? I am far from impressed... I am comparing the Fomapan 200 to HP5+ and FP4+ which I use regulary - I get waaaay better results with those films.

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I had my shares of QC related issues with Foma 200 in 120, but recently got some decent results with replenished Legacy Eco Pro at (more or less) box speed.

City Frame-335 by Eric Auer, on Flickr

City Frame-333 by Eric Auer, on Flickr

City Frame-336 by Eric Auer, on Flickr

Tom Kershaw said:

I've never been brave enough to try Fomapan 120 film.

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Well, the 100 and 400 are OK in terms of QA. The 200 has always been a mess AFAIK, which is a pity given that it's the most promising one. It's quite good in sheet film format.

koraks said:

Well, the 100 and 400 are OK in terms of QA. The 200 has always been a mess AFAIK, which is a pity given that it's the most promising one. It's quite good in sheet film format.

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Perhaps I should explore Fomapan more, my experience is limited to half a box of 10"x8" film.

I've nearly finished a bulk roll of 35mm Fomapan 200 that I bought from a member here in mid-2014, expiry date was Nov 2016. Frozen before I bought it and reloaded into cassettes and refrigerated ever since.

Always shot at ISO 200 and had no problems with shadow detail. Our metering techniques will always vary from person to person. This film tends to be on the contrasty side and when processed in HC-110, Dil H (1:63) I had to keep reducing development times to try and save the highlight details. I find HC-110 to be a very active, even feisty, developer. Around 8 mins at 20C were my more successful efforts. I've shot it recently while testing cameras prior to sale and have been developing in D-76 at 1+1, 5.5 mins at 24C. High ambient temps in Australian summer time. I much prefer the D-76 negs - longer tonal range and finer grain than HC-110.

Regarding emulsion defects I have seen a number of irregular areas where it looks like the emulsion has been scraped during coating before the emulsion has hardened. Areas of low density in the negs which appear darker on the positive images. Not clearly defined but more streaky in their appearance and the marks run in various directions. Not a problem in camera or processing.

The first shot was processed in HC-110, 10 mins at 20C. Highlights were blown on most frames on this roll. Pentax S2, Auto Takumar 55mm f1.8, metered with Gossen Profisix and 7.5 degree tele attachment.


Next shot was processed in D-76 1+1, 5.5 mins at 24C. Better tonality and grain. Test shoot for Fujica ST605N Super Tak 55mm f1.8 that I'm prepping for sale.


I doubt that I will buy any more 35mm Foma 200 when I have finished my supply. Back to FP4 and maybe Kentmere 100 or one of the Adox products which are a bit hard to source in Aust. I don't really need an ISO200 speed film. 100 or 400 normally does all I need.

tokam said:

Next shot was processed in D-76 1+1, 5.5 mins at 24C. Better tonality and grain. Test shoot for Fujica ST605N Super Tak 55mm f1.8 that I'm prepping for sale.

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I do like the tonality of this image. I'll have to try a roll, and have it developed it in D-76.

MultiFormat Shooter said:

I do like the tonality of this image. I'll have to try a roll, and have it developed it in D-76.

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Have to bear in mind the different lighting conditions, slightly overcast in the Luna Park shot. I'm about to make up some Perceptol and I'll shoot one of my last Foma 200's and process in this for comparison purposes.

PS That Super Tak 55mm f1.8 turned out to be a lovely old lens. I have too many cameras / lenses. Time to de-gas.

Crop from 2000ppi scan, no sharpening ex scanner or in post.