[Leica] Jeffery PAW week 23 - Cleanup Man

[durling at cox.net (Mike Durling)]

Forte is made in Hungary, Foma in the Czech Republic, and Efke in 
Croatia.  To make things confusing they all sell under various private 
labels as well as their own.  Some of these private brands have multiple 
sources too.  I can't keep them straight either ;>)

Mike D

Jeffery Smith wrote:
> Strange that the Arista, Paterson, Forte, Classic, and Bergger are all the
> same emulsion but have some very different prices. Is the Foma also the 
> same
> emulsion as all of these?
> 
> Jeffery Smith
> New Orleans, LA
> http://www.400tx.com
> http://400tx.blogspot.com/
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lug-bounces+jsmith342=cox.net@leica-users.org
> [mailto:lug-bounces+jsmith342=cox.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of Marty
> Deveney
> Sent: Monday, June 19, 2006 6:42 AM
> To: lug@leica-users.org
> Subject: [Leica] Jeffery PAW week 23 - Cleanup Man
> 
> 
> Fomapan 'Creative' 200 is the same film as Paterson Acupan 200.  I've had
> some mass spec done to verify it.  They both also are distinctive in that
> they are numbered as single (half) frames.  A cine film ancestry, maybe.
> There also used to be an 800 speed version (of both Foma and Paterson), but
> it was discontinued, I heard, because of problems with consistency (I
> experienced this myself with both films).  I really like Fomapan films, but
> pre-scratched, weirdly spotted, or otherwise curiously anomalous results 
> are
> not uncommon (strangest was a cassette that didn't fit - not sure how that
> one got out of the factory - and before you ask how they got it into the
> can, Fomapan used to come in little plasticized paper and foil packets).
> 
> Fomapan Creative 200 is not a T-grain emulsion - Foma got into trouble with
> Kodak in the US because the film used to be called Fomapan T200. 
> Kodak have a copyright on the T*.  This film is a normal cubic grain
> emulsion with monosize crystals and some clever incorporated developers (I
> suspect this was where the 800 speed version ran into trouble - the chief
> 'inconsistency' of tha film was black spots, caused possibly by either
> infectious development in the developer solution or from some peculiar type
> of auto-development that I never managed to understand chemically).  In 
> this
> respect it's actually conceptually closest to Fuji's Acros, also a 
> monosize,
> cubic grain, developer-incorporated emulsion.  It places these films about
> halfway between a mixed-size old style emulsion and a t-grain or epitaxial
> (like Delta) in terms of acutance, grain and fussiness.
> 
> The Forte 200 is the same as Classic 200 (and Bergger 200 and Arista 200
> EDU).  There is also a Svema or Tasma (anyway, a Russian Federation one)
> film of approximately this speed - but I think it's 250 speed.
> 
> I've developed all the Foma films in a wide variety of developers.  I've
> come to the conclusion that Xtol is the best all-round developer for 35mm,
> for these films too.  Any phenidone (and its derivatives)/ascorbate
> developer of mildly alkaline pH should perform equivalently.  LuGer John
> Black's excellent and innovative JB9, for instance.  Wade Heninger seems to
> be using Foma 400 to good advantage recently.  Bohdan Holomicek uses 
> nothing
> else and there's nothing wrong with his photos.  Tom A's divided D-76 
> (check
> the archive) works well too, or any staining developer for and old-style
> look.  There's a divided catechol develop that Tom A sent me the formula 
> for
> that makes the grain in some of these old-style film look horrendous (in 
> his
> words "like the Olgas!" that's Kata Tjuta for
> Australians): www.citi.umich.edu/ u/provos/australia/olgas.jpg
>