Ilford "Something is coming"

[snusmumriken]

No Kodachrome, sad face.

I thought they might have bought Paterson. Pity.

 

[Film-Niko]

The announcement is out. Kentmere Pan 100 and 400 are now available in 120 format:

KENTMERE PAN 100 & KENTMERE PAN 400 – NOW AVAILABLE IN 120 FORMAT

Kentmere films now available in 120 format, Our Kentmere 100 and Kentmere 400 films are now available in 120 format

www.ilfordphoto.com

That is very good news!
Not so much surprising, though, as it is a logical step and reaction to the film market development of recent years.
Kentmere 100 and 400 are solid films, with a very good price-performance ratio.

Their main disatvantage compared to FP4+ and HP5+ is the lack of an effective AHU: You see that quite clearly with light sources and strong reflective surfaces and the resulting halos in the pictures.
This also leads to a bit lower sharpness and resolution in general because of diffusion effects. All well known physics.
But this quality difference caused by production cost reduction is also the reason why the Kentmere films are significantly cheaper as the Ilford films.

This step by Harman is also very good for the film community: Now rollfilm users can avoid using Rollei RPX 100 and 400 completely, in 135 and 120.
RPX 100 and 400 are just rebranded Kentmere 100 and 400, but at a higher price. And Maco Photo Products, the user of the Rollei-Film brand, has often used very misleading marketing in the past to promote their repackaged materials.

 

[OrientPoint]

Harman obviously sees a gap in the market for low-cost, high-quality black-and-white. It seems likely to put a significant dent in Orwo, Shanghai, CatLabs and Foma's business. Price being equal I'd choose a Harman product over those any day of the week.

 

[Sirius Glass]

The best for sorting is ISO8601 - yyyy-mm-dd - (which we use here in Sweden) which sorts correctly if it is a numeric data field, but also sorts correctly as text, which neither the UK or US methods do. The US "middle-endian" version makes no logical sense at all.

Aside: I lived in the US for many years working as a software development manager, and I forced all my coders to use ISO8601 for their code comments

The inside out method in the US never made sense to me. I always use the dd-mm-yyyy on everything I sign, and especially large over the space for the mm-dd-yyyy space.

 

[Sirius Glass]

That is very good news!
Not so much surprising, though, as it is a logical step and reaction to the film market development of recent years.
Kentmere 100 and 400 are solid films, with a very good price-performance ratio.

Their main disatvantage compared to FP4+ and HP5+ is the lack of an effective AHU: You see that quite clearly with light sources and strong reflective surfaces and the resulting halos in the pictures.
This also leads to a bit lower sharpness and resolution in general because of diffusion effects. All well known physics.
But this quality difference caused by production cost reduction is also the reason why the Kentmere films are significantly cheaper as the Ilford films.

This step by Harman is also very good for the film community: Now rollfilm users can avoid using Rollei RPX 100 and 400 completely, in 135 and 120.
RPX 100 and 400 are just rebranded Kentmere 100 and 400, but at a higher price. And Maco Photo Products, the user of the Rollei-Film brand, has often used very misleading marketing in the past to promote their repackaged materials.

Air Handling Unit???? WTF??

 

[Film-Niko]

Air Handling Unit???? WTF??

No, AHU is the technical term for Anti-Halation-Undercoat.
AHU is used for high(er) quality photo films to avoid light diffusion effects in emulsions, and avoid halo-effects.
For movie-camera films the Remjet is used to achieve this.

Take pictures of (stronger) lights or reflective things with Ilford films and Kentmere films and compare the results: You immediately see the difference in performance. I've done that several times.

 

[Sirius Glass]

No, AHU is the technical term for Anti-Halation-Undercoat.
AHU is used for high(er) quality photo films to avoid light diffusion effects in emulsions, and avoid halo-effects.
For movie-camera films the Remjet is used to achieve this.

Take pictures of (stronger) lights or reflective things with Ilford films and Kentmere films and compare the results: You immediately see the difference in performance. I've done that several times.

Well that is a non starter for me. I will stick to the film from the bigger manufacturers.

 

[albireo]

This step by Harman is also very good for the film community: Now rollfilm users can avoid using Rollei RPX 100 and 400 completely, in 135 and 120.
RPX 100 and 400 are just rebranded Kentmere 100 and 400, but at a higher price.

What's the source for this, please?

 

[Film-Niko]

Well that is a non starter for me. I will stick to the film from the bigger manufacturers.

I think the question is how often do you have lights, lamps or reflective things or surfaces in the pictures.
In most cases probably not.......
Personally I took very rarely pictures with direct light sources in it. And when I do, I know before and will load the camera with a film with an AHU.
But frome time to time I like making shots of older cars and bikes with lots of chrome parts. For that I would not use the Kentmeres, but the Ilford films because of the better, halation-free recording of the shiny reflecting chrome parts.

 

[Film-Niko]

What's the source for this, please?

I have made direct comparison tests.
Countless others have done that, too. Forums and social media photo groups are full of these test results. And all came to that conclusion.
AgfaPhoto APX 100 and 400 are repackaged Kentmeres, too. As well as Fotoimpex CHM 100 and 400 (which are meanwhile discontinued).

 

[Sirius Glass]

I think the question is how often do you have lights, lamps or reflective things or surfaces in the pictures.
In most cases probably not.......
Personally I took very rarely pictures with direct light sources in it. And when I do, I know before and will load the camera with a film with an AHU.
But frome time to time I like making shots of older cars and bikes with lots of chrome parts. For that I would not use the Kentmeres, but the Ilford films because of the better, halation-free recording of the shiny reflecting chrome parts.

I rarely photograph is light sources in the composition, however avoiding films without the antihalation backing just removes having to worry about something that I should never had to worry about to begin with.

 

[MattKing]

Well that is a non starter for me. I will stick to the film from the bigger manufacturers.

As Harman is the largest manufacturer of black and white still film, this means???
The slightly less efficient anti-halation is one of the ways of increasing the film's "latitude" - i.e. ability to give good results when exposure is not perfect.
The best example of that approach - Verichrome Pan, for the last decade or more of its production.
I'm moving this to the Ilford Partner sub-forum, and then closing it. Discussions can continue in this thread: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/kentmere-100-400-in-120-format.195623/