A Film for Every Occasion

A Film for Every Occasion

The films illustrated in this image are a little before my time, but they do show a glimpse of the vast array of options that existed. The biggest problem was probably that once a film was loaded it was uneconomic to change it without using the whole roll. We would be stuck with, perhaps, an ISO 64 transparency (slide) film and then go into a building and really need something much faster. These days this isn't a problem, we just rack up the ISO to whatever we need. Modern cameras are fully capable of producing low noise images at amazing ISO settings, some more than others, but the best are truly astonishing.




There are quite a few formats in the image, but only a few that I would have used. I have experience of 35mm film, 126 and 110 cartridges, 120, 620 and 220 roll film. What is generally lost these days is the difference in character that various films had. Just looking at 35mm format:

Ilford Pan F (ISO 50) had beautiful tones, very fine grain and very high sharpness.
Ilford FP4 (ISO 125) was a good all round compromise between fine grain and a little more speed. I preferred the tonal values of Kodak Plus-X (ISO 125) and Agfapan 100.
Ilford HP4 (ISO 400) was to me a bit weak on "bite" and my usual film of choice was Kodak Tri-X (ISO 400) which had higher contrast, very sharp grain and a lovely texture, especially when processed in Paterson's FX39 developer.
Agfapan 400 was also an appealing film, as was Agfapan 1000. The latter was very fast, but bear in mind that it was also grainy, had lower contrast and is nothing like the sort of speeds we expect from our digital sensors.
Kodak Recording Film 1275 (35mm format) and Kodak Royal-X (ISO 1250 I think and only available in 120 roll film) were specialised and not cheap either.

With colour, my film of choice was Kodachrome 200, a beautifully natural colour slide film with a bit more speed than the ISO 64 version.
GAF 500 was fast, had horrible colour and grain but was useful for night shooting.
The Ektachromes had a bluer balance and we used to describe cold, sunny winter days as being "an Ektachrome sort of day", meaning the light was very blue. Ektachrome also fades faster than the incredible Kodachromes. Kodachrome will stay colour true for decades if kept in the dark, and indeed we have found that to be true.

So there's a smattering of what we used to use, but now we can get the various types of film effects in camera or via Photoshop and just not worry any more about high ISO values. What we want is what we dial in, and with news of a new pentax camera coming withy ISO 1.6 Million it looks as though the upward trend is still happily moving onwards.