Svema Color 125 @ FPP

Raptor said:

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I'm brand new here and just wanted to chime in on this.



I have several rolls of "Svema 125" that I got as freebies from FPP. I home process, so I can tell you for certain that these are hand-loaded, used commercial film cassettes. They tape onto the tail of the film that was originally in the can, and bulk roll it like a reusable cassette. The light leaks you've mentioned only seem to make an appearance on the first one or two frames of the examples I've seen, with the film before it being completely overexposed, so I think that leakage is the result of their hand loading from bulk rolls. Personally, I like the effect it has. As it has no pre-exposed edge markings, I also like it for rolling onto 120 and 620 for my MF cameras.

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A roll I shot recently came back looking on the negative strip a bit like the Rollei Digibase film. The light leaking effects reported by several
also are consistent with the Digibase film. Wonder if that's what the Svema 125 actually is.

SNewman said:

A roll I shot recently came back looking on the negative strip a bit like the Rollei Digibase film. The light leaking effects reported by several
also are consistent with the Digibase film. Wonder if that's what the Svema 125 actually is.

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That is super interesting. I recently shot and developed a roll and the similar look to CN200 is something I hadn't considered til now. It looks the same both in terms of color palette, and strange effects (light leaks on edges). That being said, I love the film but hate the quality control. I've been carrying around a 2nd roll where I want a unique and muted kind of look, but at least with my first roll I had terrible problems. End of roll light leaks, subtle edge light leaks, and a severe amount of scratches at the end of the roll. The end of roll problems ended up "giving character" to around 5 frames. The subtle edge light leak is infuriating. I can only really tell while scanning, but once you apply levels in photoshop it's obvious the edges are significantly more exposed to white light (and my scanning setup has not done this with any other types of film). I've heard elsewhere that the light leak and edge problems are from light piping, since the film base is so incredibly thin, and loading in total or partial darkness should significantly help this. The same problems might apply to CN200 and CR200 films, since they use the same base material. Svema 125 definitely has an orange mask though, unlike (mostly) CN200. Not the strongest mask like Fuji stuff, but definitely present.

That being said, I used this film in Detroit and absolutely loved it for this purpose. It's unique color palette where dark reds and browns are more intense really matched the kind of stuff I was shooting (brick buildings, rust, etc). I've attached a few examples. In the last example, the light leak is not caused by a too bright sky, I have a picture taken side-ways that has the same glow on the upper edge of the negative. It could've been a camera problem, but I've never seen it on any roll of film since (nor the scratches), and have scanned it 3 different times in different ways to make sure I didn't have a problem there. One thing I dislike though is that with this film its very hard to get a natural color balance, it seems very much up to interpretation of what you call "natural", about like C-41 processed Cinestill or Ektachrome




Also, here is one of the pictures ruined by scratches and the end of roll light leak (light leak wasn't severe and could be mostly corrected out, but it's very obvious on the negative)