Well I hopped onto the train, hit the city finishing off a roll of Neopan 1600 (I still have another 30m tin in the refrigerator

).
I was going to run a roll of Lucky film side by side, but I didn't have time to spare as I had a fair distance to walk and I thought that the NP1600 being a very high contrast film should give me a bit of an idea of the contrast differences.
I found the Melbourne address, walked up and purchased three rolls. Not that I needed three rolls, but I figure that if the first roll didn't come out well enough, I could have a second go, or a third go at the most.
The packaging is interesting, the external instructions have ISO 400/20º I would suggest this may just be a keeper packaging for posterity. Nothing like a mistake to bring out the collectors. I think it should read. ISO 400/27º. Not that I'm complaining as it has 400 in 15mm high letters plastered all over it.
As an aside, the place that I picked this film up from, was full of quite young people who seem to be desperately trying to figure out how to shoot film and getting the knowledge to do so in a very haphazard manner. I do feel for them, the misinformation they seemed to be gathering and sharing, sounded worse than when I was reading monthly magazines in the very late fifties and only half understanding the included information.
Anyway, back to the film. I loaded the camera inside, as I was aware there could be some piping effect due to the clear film base, which is polyester and 0.10mm thick.
I rated the film at 320 ASA and shot accordingly, more or less as I have been doing for many years with Neopan 400, of which I still have about 100 rolls.
Conditions were brilliant sunlight and deep shadows on a heat blasted summer day, 38ºC ambient. I started shooting at 1315h literally 10 steps from the front door of where I purchased the film. Frame 1 with two people walking on the footpath in front of it. I walked a city block or two, then picked a multi-story building in full sunlight. Frame 2 a portrait of a building with a tram car rooftop at the bottom of the image.
Frame 25 was taken especially to see if I could see if there was an anti-halation layer or not. This is a stainless steel seat in direct sunlight with some people sitting on the seat (with obviously numb backsides as those seats were very hot) and some people crossing the pedestrian mall in backlit conditions with a very dark background to show up the lack of an anti-halation layer, if in fact there wasn't one that is.
My take on an anti-halation layer, is that this film does have an anti-halation layer, otherwise those people would have little fringe highlights around the bright parts of their heads, sort of like a halo.
Comments on that are welcome.
I have also included a terrible phone picture of the leader and the first 5 frames. I know it is terrible, the yellow lines are the strobing effect of my darkroom light box fluorescent lamps. The cut off leader is being held down with a pen to stop it curling, then immediately you can see the first five frames. Note the piping on the first bit of unexposed film and of course the sprocket holes. By frame 6 the piping effect had dissapeared. Not a serious issue, but one that should be taken into consideration.
Piping is where light enters the unexposed film via the film leader that sticks out of the canister. The light travels along the film in a pipe like manner, hence the terminology. Piping was a serious problem with Kodak IR film, that film needed to be loaded into the camera in total darkness, otherwise you ended up with a film that had effects like you see on the film sprockets in this image, but right through the film and usually about half of the roll was effected so badly nothing could be used. I would suggest one should load and unload this film in quite subdued light, I did and I had this effect. I shudder to think of what it would be like in full sunlight.
All in all, I think this is a seriously good film. I will not jump out and purchase bucket loads of it, I have quite a fair bit of 35mm stuff to get through. Looking under a loupe, the frames are pretty much grain free, and this is from film, that to me, has been under exposed a bit. My next roll will be exposed at 250 ASA and I should be on the money, I'll see.
The inside of the box gave directions for processing for 16'30" at 20ºC. Due to the very hot water coming out of the tap in my darkroom, I developed in D76 1+1 for 13'30" at 22.2ºC in a Jobo rotary processor. I think the development times as given, give a good negative. I know from experience, that dropping the ASA down to 250 will probably have me very much on the mark for printable negatives in my darkroom.
Mick.