New Lomography "f2/400" color negative film announced

[Prest_400]

What is Lomography Color Negative anyway? Is it rebranded something like f2/400 or is it an original film? And who actually makes it?

I believe the theory of Kodak. 35mm says "made in USA", its plastic canisters are the same as Portra (Kodak origin) and there is a table on a site giving equivalence of Lomo CN to Kodacolor VR (Old Kodacolor Gold). If it were Kodak Gold 100, 400 and 800: Fantastic. But who knows? Lomo just contracts manufacturing. 120 says "made in China" but it could be only the finishing. On an anecdotal discussion with another photographer, she reaffirmed that after telling her it could be Kodak, she thought the signature matched to Kodacolor.

Prior to that, the film was Ferrania finished by Foma... Part of which got into some "oak casks" and it's what we are discussing here.

 

[keenmaster486]

Hmm.

One trip to the fridge and a close inspection of a Lomo Color Negative 100 35mm canister yields nothing of significance. The markings are pretty sparse, not even a Made in China/Made in USA. There is a barcode though. Could that be of use?

 

[Prest_400]

Hmm.

One trip to the fridge and a close inspection of a Lomo Color Negative 100 35mm canister yields nothing of significance. The markings are pretty sparse, not even a Made in China/Made in USA. There is a barcode though. Could that be of use?

The "Made in USA/China" is at the bottom of the cardboard box the pack of films come in. Metal canisters are a rather generic "Color Negative X00".

Then not the metal canister itself, rather the plastic one the roll comes in. If there was another word for it, forgive me for not recalling it.
Kodak's are HDPE translucent cylinders with a wider gray cap. Fuji's are all translucent plastic and the cap is not gray and of a different shape.
On the interior surface of the gray cap and the bottom (looking inside) there are a couple of letters and a number. Luck or not but a Roll of Portra and Lomo had the same plastic canister numbers. I can't prove that again as I threw and mixed them up. IIRC mine were "BB 33".

But, For Agfa Vista and Fuji (former is a rebrand of the latter) some people did use the canister codes and concluded that Agfa 200 was c200. The confusion also arose having Superia 200 sitting close in the range (but superior to c200).

Then B&W is from another supplier, The Lomochrome are Inoviscoat made, etc.

 

[keenmaster486]

Sorry, you did say plastic, I just didn't read your post right

I have three rolls of Lomo 100 Color Print Film.

Roll #1: Lid reads "AA 23", can reads "BB 24"
Roll #2: Lid reads "AA 23", can reads "BB 35"
Roll #3: Lid reads "AA 13", can reads "BB 67"

There doesn't appear to be any consistency here.

Can anyone confirm this?

 

[Prest_400]

Indeed, this anecdotal observation I had was that the lid of a canister containing Portra and another Lomo matched. So the canister came from a common batch, nothing scientific but something.

 

[cmacd123]

Sorry, you did say plastic, I just didn't read your post right

I have three rolls of Lomo 100 Color Print Film.

Roll #1: Lid reads "AA 23", can reads "BB 24"
Roll #2: Lid reads "AA 23", can reads "BB 35"
Roll #3: Lid reads "AA 13", can reads "BB 67"

the moulded numbers on the cans and lids are likely the "cavity Numbers" from the plastic moulding machine. Many of each part are made for each cycle of the machine, and if any are defective, the operator can stop the machine and check if their is a problem with the Mold cavity that made that particular part. Back in the old golden days, the cans from Toronto had numbers like TA34, TB21 which I assume let Kodackians know they were dealing with film packaged in Canada.

The one number that MIGHT give a hint, is the bar code number on the cassette. That is supposed to be able to tell the lab which process to use, and is often encoded with the "make and model" of the film in the cassette. (big labs would often batch all rolls of a given type each day to make life easier at printing time)

 

[keenmaster486]

I did a lot of searching around the net. Nobody seems to know for absolutely certain what it is, BUT I did see in a few places that it used to be rebranded Ferrania Solaris until Ferrania tanked, at which point they switched to some kind of Kodacolor stock.

The bar code number is 114034 if that helps.

Oh, googling that yields more than a few hits for people doing the same thing. The general consensus still seems to be Kodak stock of some kind.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

I was under the impression somehow that LOMO grabbed one of the last master rolls that Ferrania put out before they went under, which would make perfect sense given their business model.

I don't get the negativity of some about LOMO. People that buy LOMO film usually want to have fun. What is wrong with that? They don't think their photos will end up at MOMA, and probably don't even know what MOMA is. Let them have fun. Some are actually decent photographers.

I might buy a few rolls because fun is good. Some of you might want to try having a little.

 

[keenmaster486]

Well, my beef with Lomo photographers is that they put so much stock in doing strange and weird things to their films like cross-processing. If you look at all their example pictures, it's very difficult to tell the difference between their shots with different films - when you cross-process and smear dirt on film etc., they all look the same.

Their primary requirement for good pictures seems to be over-saturated, blown-out colors - but only in one channel, usually red or yellow.

 

[eddyd]

The hipsters who start with Lomo move up to regular brand films. And Kodak has had generic film cannisters for years. So let's not knock Lomo for the same thing. But Lomo doesn't have generic cannisters on all of their films.I have several rolls of different types of lomo film and never had a problem. And on the outside of my three pack packaging it says. Made in the USA. And their is nothing wrong with cross processing . I do that to all my slide films. And smearing dirt on them is their artistic license. I never liked Warhol but many people do and his work is worth a Fortune so who am I to comment.I guess same traditional looking photos are boring to them and that's why they smear dirt or whatever they do to them. The stranger the more attention they get. Art is subjective. The film photography project podcast is also keeping film alive but they also sell expired film.