Gigabit Film - Revisited

Seeing several threads recently about fine grain and large enlargements reminded me of when I first came across APUG. At the time I had just heard of Gigabit 35mm film and spotted a thread on it started by Bjorke in 2003. While it didn't get any bad comments, few members seemed to have tried it. There was one illustrative enlargement of a small part of the neg which seemed amazing but it was 4x5 Gigabit sheet.

Since then I have seen little or no mention of it despite the quest for Ilford Delta 25, fine grain etc.

Since Bjorke's thread how many have tried it and what comments would they care to make.

It seems strange that in as broad a spectrum of users of film as we have on APUG and periodic threads on the quest for high resolution that Gigabit seems to deliver it seems to have disappeared from everyone's radar.

In the UK it's still available from RK Retrographic and has an article on it by M Busselle. It's certainly not been a best seller at least not here on APUG and in the threads about best film I have never seen it mentioned ever again.

pentaxuser

One of the latest development in ultra high resolution film and developer is this product from SPUR:

http://www.spur-photo.com/dat_ort_ure.pdf

The R&D dpt. of Zeiss tested it a few months ago with a claim for over 400 ln/mm together with one of their new lenses.( Biogon T* 2,8/25 ). The film/developer is also sold under ADOX CMS 20.
Known regular microfilms with other SPUR developers are Agfa Copex (Nanospeed) and the Kodak Imagelink (Imagespeed).

The mentioned Gigabit is also Copex micro film.

Comparing with other regular slow speed films Efke25/ADOX and Rollei PAN25 are depending a lot on the quality of lens due to the fact the ln/mm of these films are far over the normal resolution from a normal quality lens. Interesting for 35mm users who are using top gear lenses (Zeiss/Leica or whatever) and wanted to make an enlargement over 30X40cm. Or for repro.

A 35mm negative (even with micro film) will loose always against a large format negative but in some situations you can shoot that kind of photo which was not possible with a large camera format.
Summurized: An interesting development for 35mm and Minox 8X11mm format but not so much for a larger format.

Best regards,

Robert

I tried a Gigabit kit (included the developer,Spur?) in 4X5 format a few years ago; but had major problems with developing the film (I believe it was unusual wavy effects). So put the film in freezer for later attempt & got rid of developer. For me, it was just an experiment since the Efke films yield more than enough resolution for my max size prints.

I'm testing a roll actually and have a second one in my fridge . But this film is very expensive, so i will not continue with it after this test . In this category, you can find the Adox CMS - it has been tested by Donald Qualls here : (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

And two other thread about it :

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

doughowk said:

I tried a Gigabit kit (included the developer,Spur?) in 4X5 format a few years ago; but had major problems with developing the film (I believe it was unusual wavy effects). So put the film in freezer for later attempt & got rid of developer. For me, it was just an experiment since the Efke films yield more than enough resolution for my max size prints.

Click to expand...

Yes this comment and others on developing put me off. I wrote to RK photographic and was told that the secret lies in shaking the tank instantly and vigorously like a cocktail shaker for the first 12 seconds.

I got the impression that the right action for the first 12 secs was crucial and failure to do shake very vigorously in this period gave problems from which recovery might be impossible.

pentaxuser

Interesting. The instructions for Tech Pan in Technidol recommended a similar agitation method.

While I haven't tried the Gigabit film, I have attempted to use various microfilms for continuous tone negatives. All attempts have been failures. No matter what special developer I have used the resulting film contrast has been too high for me. Another problem is exposure, these films have absolutely no exposure latitude. If I want a fine grain film I will stick with something like Efke 25 or Ilford PanF+.

The contrast is a general problem with all those micro films. That's why you need the special developers. The exposure latitude is rather low, specially for Imagelink, Copex is already better.

SPUR never sold these type of films before over 35mm format. IMO it has some advantages in the smaller formats. But the grain is neglectible for all these type of micro films but very difficult in situations where you have too much F stops in lighting.

The following is in German but contains a chart, Bild 2, which shows how the MTF contrast is clearly better for the microfilm at high resolutions:
www.schwarzweiss-magazin.de/swmag_wollstein_32.htm
I thought I could see this with my Olympus prime lenses using Copex Rapid in Spur nanospeed developer.However, the microfilms are slow to use with a red filter and I occasionally like to develop a film in Pyro.

For all scientific macro work I use Russian micro film Mikrat-500, made by FoMos company. It's a 35mm panchromatically sensibilized film, 4 ASA, ultra-finegrained and contrasty, giving true 500 lpm on 1:100 contrast object. For continuous tone negs, I expose it as 2 or 4 ASA (no much difference even if I set the meter to 8 ASA). My developer for it, believe it or not, is Ilfotec HC 1+79 - it gives a perfect, well equalized negative, without blocked highlights. That's my way to tame an inherent high contrast of Mikrat - I can't even say that I need to overexpose it to get details in shadows, everything comes out OK if the lighting is right.

Cheers from Moscow, Zhenya

I used the Gigabit in the past for high contast scenes in 4x5 and 35 mm but was not so happy with the not always constant results!
Sometimes it worked very good sometime I had some strange things on it espesialy in the air and highlight aera!
Prever to work with lesser resolution and lesser troubles!