Ultrafine Finesse 400 35mm x 100 ft Black and White Film

Donald Qualls said:

Rebranded 35mm Foma has no edge markings, and 35mm Foma doesn't color the developer or pre-wash (that's 120 and sheet film only). Normal time in Xtol stock for Foma 400 is 7:00, so an extra 0:30 would give a (very) slight increase in contrast.

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I have considered this. I shoot a fair amount of Fomapan 100 and have some experience with Fomapan 200. The way Fomapan 400 has been described, I would expect much more grain than I saw with this film. I did shoot my first roll of Fomapan 400 over the weekend, and will compare the two - unfortunately I developed the Fomapan in XTOL 1+1 and Finesse in XTOL stock, so it may not be a perfect comparison.

Wallendo said:

I have considered this. I shoot a fair amount of Fomapan 100 and have some experience with Fomapan 200. The way Fomapan 400 has been described, I would expect much more grain than I saw with this film. I did shoot my first roll of Fomapan 400 over the weekend, and will compare the two - unfortunately I developed the Fomapan in XTOL 1+1 and Finesse in XTOL stock, so it may not be a perfect comparison.

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Have you had much luck pushing Foma 200? There's a thread on the rangefinder forum where someone has done that (in Rodinal no less) with results comparable to Tri-X. His images actually look pretty good. I've just loaded my first roll of Arista Edu/Foma 200 for trial. I'd like to have a budget-friendly 400 ISO film, but Arista Edu/Foma 400 is too coarse-grained for me. Based on what I've seen so far, I'll probably order 100' of Finesse and de-rate it when I want finer grain, rather than push Foma 200.

I look forward to seeing your results.

BTW, would you consider selling a single roll?

I've pushed Foma 200 to 400 and 800, 400 in MCM 100 and D76, 400 is not much of a push while 800 is on the very edge. In terms of grain Foma 400 has a lot of grain, I develop only in MCM 100 to keep it tight, I think that Xtreme 400 is little more grainy than Trix. If speed and grain is an issue I shoot Tmax 400. I wish Photowarehouse would sell singles rolls, I hate to buy a 100 foot roll of a film that I may not like.

Paul Howell said:

I wish Photowarehouse would sell singles rolls, I hate to buy a 100 foot roll of a film that I may not like.

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Same here!

Here are a few sample images. I let VueScan set black and white points, but no other manipulation. I'm sure a few minutes with Lightroom would fix many of these images. Scanned at 3600 dpi on a Plustek scanner.

20201024 UltraFine Finesse 400 - Leica IIIc - Canon 50_1.8 LTM - XTOL stock 7m30s 2020-10-28-0025 by https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallendo/, on Flickr

20201024 UltraFine Finesse 400 - Leica IIIc - Canon 50_1.8 LTM - XTOL stock 7m30s 2020-10-28-0022 by https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallendo/, on Flickr

20201024 UltraFine Finesse 400 - Leica IIIc - Canon 50_1.8 LTM - XTOL stock 7m30s 2020-10-28-0008 by https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallendo/, on Flickr

20201024 UltraFine Finesse 400 - Leica IIIc - Canon 50_1.8 LTM - XTOL stock 7m30s 2020-10-28-0013 by https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallendo/, on Flickr

20201024 UltraFine Finesse 400 - Leica IIIc - Canon 50_1.8 LTM - XTOL stock 7m30s 2020-10-28-0010 by https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallendo/, on Flickr

Wallendo said:

The way Fomapan 400 has been described, I would expect much more grain than I saw with this film.

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That's strongly affected by the developer used. I've had grain comparable to 1970s vintage Tri-X when processing .EDU Ultra 400 (= Fomapan) in Parodinal, but in Xtol Stock it's actually fairly smooth. Sure, there's grain -- there always will be with cubic grain 400 speed emulsion -- but it's neither obtrusive nor, IMO, objectionable.

Wallendo said:

Here are a few sample images. I let VueScan set black and white points, but no other manipulation. I'm sure a few minutes with Lightroom would fix many of these images. Scanned at 3600 dpi on a Plustek scanner.

20201024 UltraFine Finesse 400 - Leica IIIc - Canon 50_1.8 LTM - XTOL stock 7m30s 2020-10-28-0008 by https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallendo/, on Flickr

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What I'm seeing is: ugly, clumpy grain, poor shadow detail, and muddy, detail-less whites. Very "chalk and soot" as far as I can tell.

Just placed my order!

Got a picture of the sprocket holes?

Patrick Robert James said:

Got a picture of the sprocket holes?

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UltraFine Finesse sprocket holes by https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallendo/, on Flickr

Patrick Robert James said:

Got a picture of the sprocket holes?

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Just my curiosity but what do the sprocket holes tell you?

Thanks

pentaxuser

I believe film stocks intended for motion picture or lab use often have perforations with more rounded edges than stocks intended for still camera use.
On the left is Orwo DP31, and TMax 100 on the right.

pentaxuser said:

Just my curiosity but what do the sprocket holes tell you?

Thanks

pentaxuser

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I was curious if it was Orwo. woodlandSeranade explained it....

Patrick, thanks. I thought this might be why you had asked the question but it is always worth asking such things

pentaxuser

I'm not sure how helpful this would be for folks, but here's my H&D curves of various films, including Finesse 400 which I started testing yesterday. Finesse is the green line (second from the top). Apologies the colors are so close - I didn't pick them (PowerBI did). I also did an H&D on pen and paper and using that I came up with a gamma of 0.57 and CI of 0.50 using the published dev time for XTOL although I adjust my time due to developing at 19C instead of 20C (as that was my room temperature).

I use XTOL-Replenishment with a DIY rotary using a JOBO 2500 drum (with a pre-wash) so I'm not sure if my times will translate but in general I find that my times are usually close to XTOL Stock times which I think makes sense since I've read one should subtract about 15% dev time to hand agitation times when using a JOBO; but likewise XTOL-R adds about 15% more time. So it sort of cancels out. That said, the CI is a little under the Kodak standard (0.56 I believe) so I will likely dev another strip today with a bit more dev time just to see the difference.

I cannot calculate ISO without the CI being closer I believe, but I'm also using my enlarger and not a sensitometer so I don't know how valid that would be anyway.

All said what might actually be helpful for folks is to see the curve. Notice it looks similar to HR50 in that I was able to get both the toe and shoulder within one exposure test. It's not shown here but I did several tests of FP4 (and also Pancro 400 which isn't shown) and wasn't able to capture both in one exposure with those films. For CHS you can see it just starts to curve over a little. This indicates to me that this is a film meant for that "classic" look similar to how Adox advertises CHS ii. For folks wanting a long straight-line, this is probably not your film choice at least based on my testing and developer.

I'm not expert in H&Ds or anything (in fact only recently learned how to do them) but a strong toe and shoulder makes me think the film probably won't push quite as well. I'll try it anyway but I was hoping to try another film other than HP5 to bulk load and for pushing, just to try something new.

Another note, the pre-wash didn't have any color to it at all. AristaEDU 200 (Fomapan 200?) is green. CHS ii is yellow. I think T-Max is purpleish? I had one film that was blue but don't remember what it is. But this was clear. It did have an odor though which smelled a little like Rollei IR but not quite - it was more, erhm, peppery I guess? I realize I'm trying to describe the subtle notes of what's just pre-wash water but even so thought this, plus the above, might be helpful for folks trying to pin down where this film comes from.

I haven't actually taken any photos with it yet at this point - just film tests. I'd like to try to get my CI a little closer but will likely spool up a roll in a day or two, though not sure when I'll finish the roll. I'll shoot that one at box and then start trying to push it.

That lack of anti-halation is still the giveaway to me that it's not one of the usual suspects (i.e. not Foma, not Kentmere famliy). If it's not Ilford PAN, then it's another stock with poor anti-halation.

What about something off the wall like maybe Silberra? I see the dev times don't match but I saw them pop up in my IG feed and thought that might be something to consider.

So quick update, I developed one more test strip with 15% more dev time (9:30 at 19C so 8:30 at 20C assuming Massive Dev's time/temp conversion is accurate). Interestingly, this is the dev times for Silberra U200 (https://silberra.com/films/silberra-u200-u400) and, while I'm in no way making any claims here, it is interesting that my personal ISO (using the Kodak method found in their h470 worksheet) is 284.

I should point out though that my Kodak ISOs are all over the place for various films and aren't all within the +/- 0.05 density tolerance. So I'm not sure I can trust them, although a few seem pretty close when doing some film tests. All told they are:

Ilford FP4: 80
Pancro: 121
Adox CHS-ii: 28
Adox HR-50: 4

In pictoral tests, these don't seem far off except for CHS-ii which I think is closer to 50 or even 100 depending on my metering. HR-50 seems crazy low but I get rather lovely contrast at ISO 3 (at 5:00 dev time). Since it's really meant for using HR-Dev it's possible for the contrast I want, that's the ISO I need to be at.

Of note these also may not translate to anyone else as it's my XTOL-R solution and it's possible it's causing some speed loss (though XTOL is normally known as a close-to-box speed developer). I normally replenish at about 80ml per equivalent 35mm/36-exp roll and using a 2L solution.

So all told I think I'll try Finesse at either 250 or 320 as a base and see where I land.

EDIT: Aha, hmm while my tests seem to be not too far off from these ISOs, at least on the films I tested, I think what is throwing the ISO ratings off is either my lux meter not being especially accurate and/or using an enlarger (over a sensitometer) which undoubtedly has lag to reach full brightness. I could test the latter by using a shutter but I don't think I could light proof my enlarger well enough to avoid some light spill. I still think I'll try Finesse at a slightly lower ISO just to see though.

Ok developed my first pictoral roll of Finesse 400. It was of some friends of ours, their new baby; my dog, and random poorly composed shots while riding round in the car So not really any photos that I can share. A few things I noticed though.

First, I developed Finesse in XTOL-R and I found the grain to be rather fine to my eyes. Finer than HP5 but I haven't done proper exposure tests of HP5 to know where my dev times are (though I'd imagine they're pretty close to what they should be). I also haven't yet compared the grain to, say, FP4 or any t-grain films but it does seem rather fine. What grain there is seems rather smooth. Now granted this is from crappy flatbed scans on an V750 so the real test, for me anyway, is how it prints in the darkroom.

Second thing I noticed, it really seems to react to an orange filter (YEL15). Third thing is it seems to have really nice kinda silky tones to it (hence the name I suppose). I rated it at 320 and generally I think I could probably rate it at box speed and do ok. Under-exposure wasn't great, as you could imagine, but not as bad as other films. At a first roll in, I have to say I rather like it so far! Major downsides are it's not available in 120 (yet?) and sheets (though neither is Extreme).

I've got another roll loaded that will be a two stop push. Curious how that will go since I was originally wanting a pushable film for indoor snapshots and get-togethers (you know, things hopefully we'll get to do more of in 2021 than 2020).

I didn't have really any shots I overexposed to the moon, so don't have an opinion yet on the prominent S curve I noticed in my film curves. I had a few that were a bit dense and didn't notice any obvious blown out bits. But there were kinda crappy photos (blurry for one) and didn't represent a great test there.

Anyways initial impressions are that I quite like it so far!

m00dawg said:

I'm not sure how helpful this would be for folks, but here's my H&D curves of various films, including Finesse 400 which I started testing yesterday. Finesse is the green line (second from the top). Apologies the colors are so close - I didn't pick them (PowerBI did). I also did an H&D on pen and paper and using that I came up with a gamma of 0.57 and CI of 0.50 using the published dev time for XTOL although I adjust my time due to developing at 19C instead of 20C (as that was my room temperature).

I use XTOL-Replenishment with a DIY rotary using a JOBO 2500 drum (with a pre-wash) so I'm not sure if my times will translate but in general I find that my times are usually close to XTOL Stock times which I think makes sense since I've read one should subtract about 15% dev time to hand agitation times when using a JOBO; but likewise XTOL-R adds about 15% more time. So it sort of cancels out. That said, the CI is a little under the Kodak standard (0.56 I believe) so I will likely dev another strip today with a bit more dev time just to see the difference.

I cannot calculate ISO without the CI being closer I believe, but I'm also using my enlarger and not a sensitometer so I don't know how valid that would be anyway.

All said what might actually be helpful for folks is to see the curve. Notice it looks similar to HR50 in that I was able to get both the toe and shoulder within one exposure test. It's not shown here but I did several tests of FP4 (and also Pancro 400 which isn't shown) and wasn't able to capture both in one exposure with those films. For CHS you can see it just starts to curve over a little. This indicates to me that this is a film meant for that "classic" look similar to how Adox advertises CHS ii. For folks wanting a long straight-line, this is probably not your film choice at least based on my testing and developer.

I'm not expert in H&Ds or anything (in fact only recently learned how to do them) but a strong toe and shoulder makes me think the film probably won't push quite as well. I'll try it anyway but I was hoping to try another film other than HP5 to bulk load and for pushing, just to try something new.

Another note, the pre-wash didn't have any color to it at all. AristaEDU 200 (Fomapan 200?) is green. CHS ii is yellow. I think T-Max is purpleish? I had one film that was blue but don't remember what it is. But this was clear. It did have an odor though which smelled a little like Rollei IR but not quite - it was more, erhm, peppery I guess? I realize I'm trying to describe the subtle notes of what's just pre-wash water but even so thought this, plus the above, might be helpful for folks trying to pin down where this film comes from.

I haven't actually taken any photos with it yet at this point - just film tests. I'd like to try to get my CI a little closer but will likely spool up a roll in a day or two, though not sure when I'll finish the roll. I'll shoot that one at box and then start trying to push it.

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FYI, the Foma green color is specific to their 120 film. The 35mm film adds no color to the presoak or developer water.

Some results from pushing Finesse 400 2 stops, to 1600. This was in my XTOL-R. Again not the best images but hopefully gets the point across. Here I found the grain more prominent but still looks rather unobtrusive. It's getting closer to what I think of with the grain of HP5 but I still think it might be a little less grainy?

I keep being surprised by how much an orange filter affects this film. It seems like more than other films, but this is not a fair comparison at all. The last 2 photos are with no filter and an orange filter.

Some of the negatives themselves are a bit thin whereas HP5 usually doesn't do that. I used the 30% per stop rule here but I think it could use a bit more than that perhaps. I haven't created a "family of curves" (and need to) to better dial that in. I'm going to at least do contact prints of the rolls I've shot. I'm almost done with a 3rd roll (shot at box) that I'm rather excited about so may wait to do printing until then.

Anyways so far, yeah I like this! Has a different (softer?) look than HP5 which I think is nice if different. My only real gripe is the lack of info on the rebate - if for nothing else than I might loose the order I shot these in once I cut the strips

I just finished a roll in D76. Looks pretty good to me. I shot this yesterday while testing a new (to me) N2000. This was in Program exposure mode at box speed. I've processed a couple rolls in Rodinal, and they looked similar to what I've gotten with HP5, where the grain is there, but not objectionable like Arista Edu 400.

Wallendo said:

I developed my first roll last night and have scanned a few images. I will try to post images or links this evening if I have the time.

My initial impressions:
The film comes on a gray base similar to that used by Harmon and Foma. There is no color change when developer is emptied (no antihalation dyes are removed). There are absolutely no markings of any sort on the rebates (UltraFine Xtreme has the name printed on the rebate).
I developed in XTOL stock for 7m 30s at 69 degrees (room temperature). My initial images show more contrast than Kentmere, HP5+, or UltraFine Xtreme. The negatives appear somewhat dense, but it should be noted that the images I have scanned were shot with a Leica IIIc from 1949 at 1/1000s so I suspect a little overexposure was built in. Despite that, the images scanned well. Grain was pleasant but not obtrusive. I also found the images quite sharp. I actually prefer this film to Kentmere, HP5+, and UltraFine Xtreme.
My initial impression is that this doesn't look like any Harman film I have shot (I have never shot Ilford Pan, however), but that could just be due to differences in exposure or development. Since Harman was shut down for several months due to COVID, it would surprise me if they had time to make a small batch of film for UltraFine Online so it is likely they sourced this film from somewhere else (warehoused film or a different supplier).

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Hey, I have a Leica IIIc from 1944! My aunt was in post war Europe and won it as a door prize on an army base. She gave it to her brother in law, my father, because he was a professional photographer.

It never fails to amaze me that with all the bombing, supply chain, and labor issues, you would never know of the problems. I did have the shutter cleaned and test five years ago because it was very sticky.

Paul Verizzo said:

with all the bombing, supply chain, and labor issues, you would never know of the problems.

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That's the result of management and workers who care about the finished product, not what it took to get there. Those cameras were difficult to get immediately post-War (as were Contax), but the ones you could get were perfectly fine.

I bought both the 100 and 400 speed, the 100 speed was pretty good, I have loaded the 400 into cassettes, 8, 24, and 36 exposures. The first of the 400 I shot was under exposed by 2 stop, the meter Minolta 7xi was off, but did not notice until it was too late and I had developed for ISO 400.