Kodak Academy 200.

Yesterday, my dad came back home with two B&W films he "borrowed" from a friend of his -- a long story would follow this sentence if i was to play with your neurves...

So anyway, the two films are labelled "Kodak Academy 200" and look fresh enough. No blurry paint and no scratches on them or whatever. The thing is, i've never even heard of "Academy 200", and from the quick search i just did, not many people have. I found a couple of posts on forums and mailing lists claiming that this is a film that Kodak markets only on third world countries such as India [!] or Russia [!]. Another guy mentioned that this is old cinema film -- which is actually not, i can tell you that from what i see in front of me.

I've also found some developing information on Digital Truth. I've seen no images or read about anybody using this film, though. What the...?

Does anybody have any information about it? I'm rather curious! =)



-Sino.

Hi Sino,

your info about Academy 200 is true - it is really marketed now in Russia, that's why I know it It should be a respooled BW cine film negative, and it can be exposed as ASA 50-1600 without much change in processing, if I correctly remember it... it gives a rather flat image, as it is needed for cinema works. I can't say it's good, but maybe it would work well for contrasty subjects?

Cheers,
Zhenya

Hello Zhenya!

Apart from people mentioning Russia and India as third world countries [!], i was also impressed by the lack of information about this film on the web. It's as if Kodak doesn't really like the fact that they're selling it...

I've decided to do my tests leaving it to it's current 200 ASA. And go for some contrasty subjects too, thank you very much.



-Sino.

Bracket a little bit your shots and see how things go.

That's a point too. I already did! =)


-Sino.

I've took the finished film yesterday from the darkroom -- i didn't use plural here, since the first of these... problems who are marketed with the name "film" didn't survive. It actually broke itself to pieces inside the spiral. Oh well, not such a loss, it was full of testshots of lamps and geometric shapes.

I used T-MAX Dev, 1+4 @ 20c for 5 mins, and the results were actually not that flat. I mostly shot contrasty subjects, following Zhenya's advice. A couple of them ended up pretty interesting, and i spent like two or three hours yesterday trying to see what i can make of them. I can tell you this: this is the MOST TIRING FILM i have ever tried printing. The printing times vary a lot and most of the time they are huge, compared to all other Kodak [or not] films i've used...

I may post a couple of the test-prints here, if i find a scanner that actually... scans. Mine doesn't, not anymore!


-Sino.

A couple of days ago I bought some Fuji ProPlus (C41) film but along with that, the guy gave me a roll of Kodak Academy 200 BW film for free, saying it was just lying around in his shop and he didn't want it.

It's great to get a free roll, but I have absolutely no idea how to process this, or how long ago this has expired.

Should I follow the standard procedure of shooting at ISO 100 or 160 (it expired probably 3-4 years ago and probably hasn't been refrigerated) and then processing as usual (I use Caffenol)?

Cheers,
Som