School me on Arista EDU B&W Film

Have a few extra bucks in my pocket this week and thinking of picking up a box of Arista EDU 100ASA in 4x5. I've shot Kodak & Ilford almost exclusively with the exception of experimenting with some Efke. What kind of performance should I expect as far as grain and tonality response. How does it compare with TMax 100?

Arista 100 is Formapan 100, I shoot it but perfer Forma 200 in 4X5, I rate at 100 and develop in D76 1:2 or Rodinal 1:50. I dont think that Formapan 100 or 200 are t grained films.

I love Arista.EDU Ultra, and have used it in every size from 35mm up to 4x5 and in 100 and 400 speeds. PDH is right - it's Fomapan. It is conventional grain, not T-grain, but finer to my eye than the sometimes grungy look of Plus-X or Tri-X. Compared to TMX, I'd say TMX is finer and smoother, but Fomapan is nice and smooth in the midtones.

Like Mr. Christian, I love Arista EDU ultra. I rate the film at box speed and process it in Xtol full strength. Here are some samples
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)
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One thing to watch for, when developing use half normal strength stop or water , helps avoid pinholes in the emulsion. I prefer to use Pyro developers also, the emulsion is a little soft and can be easily damaged, Pyro developers harden it.

Great work, Mainecoon! I especially like the second one, the still life.

Here's a few of my own shots, in different developers and with different cameras:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/otterdaemmerung/7539651406/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/otterdaemmerung/6036814123/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/otterdaemmerung/8024415791/

Rick A said:

One thing to watch for, when developing use half normal strength stop or water , helps avoid pinholes in the emulsion. I prefer to use Pyro developers also, the emulsion is a little soft and can be easily damaged, Pyro developers harden it.

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Agreed. Avoid ANY finger contact because even on the 35mm base it will show, but much more prominent on 4x5. Never had an issue with that until this film. Also in Pyro I run 2:2:100 rather than my standard 1:1:100 with great results.

I use latex gloves with 4x5 to prevent finger marks on the Arista 100.

Thanks! I read a few review online but wanted to get some APUG first hand reports. I'll pick up a box of 50 and shoot away. I'll probably develop in either D76 or DD-X. I might mix up a batch of Rodinol in the future and a side by side.

I recommend EI50 for this film. For rotary development, either Xtol 1+1 for 8:00 or D76 1+1 for 9:00. The Xtol probably achieves ISO100 though I haven't measured properly.

As to your "compare it with others" question, it's nowhere near as fine as TMX but then this is 4x5 so diffraction is likely more limiting of your resolution. It's similar to FP4 in terms of grain obtrusiveness, maybe a little coarser. Which is to say 'completely invisible in a 16x20" print'. For a really rough comparison, there's about as much information in a 4x5 Foma100 shot as a 6x7 Acros shot; a 4x5 Foma100 is visibly better than a 6x7 TMY2@800 under close inspection but there's not a lot in it. The Foma/Arista 200 is far coarser.

Here are my samples in 4x5 (Foma 100) and 6x7 (Foma 200). It's been my most-used film in 4x5; after all it's damn cheap and given the optical limits of the format, you're not going to see much (any?) smoother results from better films. And the tonality is great.

The only big drawback for me is that it has terrible reciprocity failure. I wouldn't ever bother shooting night shots with it and it's annoying even in early evening when you're getting meter readings of 2s-4s.

I have a question about development.
So if the film is rated at asa 100 and the massive development chart said i should use 7 min to develop.
Then I saw you guys saying the actual speed should be 50 and I followed that.
Should I still use 7 min then?

By all means try it at 100 - I reckon it probably does 100 in Xtol, but maybe only just. 50 will be safer for your shadows. Shoot a sheet at each (or a few frames at each, for rollfilm) speed and see which of the negatives you prefer.

Keep the same development time initially. The recommended times give about the right contrast I think but if you're not accurate with your developing time/temp/dilution, it can build to too-high contrast pretty quickly.

Terry Christian said:

Great work, Mainecoon! I especially like the second one, the still life.

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Love your work too Terry! Beautiful tonality. Souping in HC-110 B gives it an old time look. That the best I can describe it. You use Rodinal and I think the looks is about the same.

there's a reciprocity failure chart for fomapan 100/arista edu ultra 100 here.

i get great 4x5 negatives on fomapan 100/arista edu @ 50 ASA and developed 10-12 minutes in pyrocat at 1:1:100. most of my exposures go beyond a second, and i found here on apug some times for reciprocity failures from Murray@uptowngallery and simply compiled them in a handy pdf that so far hasn't failed me. http://consumptive.org/2011/04/03/fomapan-100-schwarzchild-effect/

I shoot a lot of EDU 100 and develop it in Rodinal almost exclusively. It is a terrific film and very inexpensive. I have never experienced any fingerprints on the emulsion but I do try to handle it by the edges.

Shootar401 said:

Have a few extra bucks in my pocket this week and thinking of picking up a box of Arista EDU 100ASA in 4x5. I've shot Kodak & Ilford almost exclusively with the exception of experimenting with some Efke. What kind of performance should I expect as far as grain and tonality response. How does it compare with TMax 100?

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I don't use tmax100 mostly because it has a UV blocking layer and I like to do UV based contact prints like cyanotype and vandyke. So I use tmax400 instead. But for a slower film, I've used Arista/Foma 100 in 4x5 for about a hundred sheets.

It's got good tones and is very conventional in it's look. Grain is kinda big. Compared to the Kodak, it's very sensitive to processing; easy to get pinholes from strong fixer or stop. I have settled on using tf4 fixer as the kodak fixer was causing me pinholes. I have had some quality problems in 8x10; it's good but not perfect as we'd expect from Kodak/Ilford/Fuji.

Compared to Tmax400, it it shows freckles better on people. It's like the tmy2 was yellow filtered or something. I generally shoot Arista/Foma100 at 64 and develop it in pyrocat-hd 1:1:100 like I do tmax. When I run out, I'll probably get some Ilford film for the lower speed option to go along with my hoard of tmy2. It's not much more money for perfect film. At least in the US, Ilford has a price advantage over Kodak/Fuji and it's always good quality.