Film Review: Film Ferrania P30 In 35mm

After what seems like an eternity of paused availability (no doubt due to COVID) I recently received the welcome news that Film Ferrania is once again ramping up their production of P30 film stock in 35mm format. I became aware of Film Ferrania a number of years back when a sales rep at my local camera shop recommended it and I liked the film immediately, though I wasn’t totally happy with the images I made with it. That was of no fault to the film but more my skills as a photographer. By the time I got around to picking up some more stock became low and I was forced to go back to my standby films like Ilford and Rollei.

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Photographed with a Minolta SRT-101 and Film Ferrania P30 35mm film.

P30 has a box speed of ISO 80. Since these are the first rolls of P30 I’ve worked with in a long time I decided I better not get fancy and just metered everything at ISO 80 with a hand held meter. Often it is best to see what a film stock is capable of at the manufacturer’s recommendation even if your lighting situation is a bit on the tricky side. I would have preferred to put my test rolls through the paces on a more overcast day with even lighting, but alas, summer decided to come out in full force this past week. As such, there was a huge range in light values coming through the studio windows, sometimes as much as four or five stops between light and shadow.

Made in Italy, Film Ferrania markets their film stock as being similar in look to the stock used by Italian film makers such as Roberto Fellini. If you’ve ever seen classics like 8 1/2 or La Dolca Vita you’ll know the look they are talking about. Normally I would consider lines like this from a film manufacturer to be a bit of a gimmick (I’m looking at you Lomography!!) but with Film Ferrania I can see where they are coming from. P30 has a punchy and contrasty look to it but manages to easily keep detail in both the highlights and the shadows. It also has very minimal and very soft grain, especially considering the fact that I developed these images in Rodinal, a developer known to produce sharp and pronounced grain structure.

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Photographed with a Minolta SRT-101 and Film Ferrania P30 35mm film.

Speaking of Rodinal, P30 seems to be a perfect candidate for stand development. For the images on this post I metered areas where dark shadow and bright light came together and developed at 1:100 for exactly 60 minutes. Agitation was for fifteen seconds at the beginning and five more agitations at 30 minutes. Normally with stand development I get a lot of highlight effects where dark areas of the final image transition to more neutral gray. Sometimes I like this effect and sometimes I don’t. With P30 I don’t seem to get any of that, which isn’t necessarily good or bad, but is an interesting characteristic of the film. Every single frame on two rolls of film came out well exposed with plenty of gradation from white to black.

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Photographed with a Minolta SRT-101 and Film Ferrania P30 35mm film.

Right now Ferrania P30 is only available in 35mm. That’s all well and good and the world needs as many 35mm film stocks as we can get. However, I can’t help but feel excited at the prospect of P30 perhaps being available one day in medium format (120) or heck, even larger formats like 4x5. I also think P30 would look great in a smaller format like 16mm or even 8mm but I know the market for smaller formats like that are limited and a release is unlikely.

Now with all that being said, if you are going to work with a film stock that is slower than ISO 100 I suppose 35mm is the one you want. Why you might ask? Well, the answer is pretty simple. 35mm cameras tend to have faster lenses which means you can open up the aperture and let in more light, keeping your shutter speeds up, and negating the use of a tripod. The 50mm lens on my Minolta SRT-101 opens up to f/1.4 and I did the majority of the images in this review from f/2 to about f/5.6. I’m always thankful when I can avoid a tripod and at ISO 80 that wouldn’t necessarily be the case with slower medium format lenses.

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Photographed with a Minolta SRT-101 and Film Ferrania P30 35mm film.

You can read more about Film Ferrania on their website HERE including where to purchase over the coming months. I imagine it will still take some time before they are in full swing, but if you get a chance to pick up some P30 I definitely recommend it.

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Remembering Why I Love Fomapan Film

There was a period of time, almost a decade in fact, where I was using Fomapan film almost exclusively. I’m not going to deny I started down that particular path because the film was incredibly cheap and I’ve never been a photographer who could spend a lot of money on equipment. Just to date me a little bit, I used to buy Foma film in 120 format for $1.09 a roll. Yes indeed you read that right, just a $1.09 a roll. At that price I was able to experiment and take a lot of risks with my photography and I would say I learned more about technique and exposure during that period than at any other time in my life.

Now days I’m lucky to find Fomapan film for around $5.00 a roll, and while that is still cheaper than both Kodak and Ilford, it’s not such a killer savings that I feel compelled to make a special effort to find the stock on-line. The camera shop three miles from my house sells Ilford FP4 and HP5 for $5.99 a roll and the extra 99 cents is worth it if it means supporting a local business and buying a film with more consistent quality control. So with that mentality in mind, Fomapan film has been by and large put on the back burner.

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Photographed with Fomapan 100 speed film and a Hasselblad 500c/m

A few months ago however I just decided for the heck of it to buy about ten rolls of Fomapan 100 . I paid about $4.99 a roll for it…grrrr…. The weather was really nice at the time and I was feeling nostalgic for the good ol’ days. That seems to be happening to me more and more then older I get. Looking at the results I had forgotten how much I actually enjoyed the look of this particular film stock.

There are a lot of subtle aspects to it that are completely unique. Skin tones have a tiny bit of “glow” and the grain structure is both pronounced, and yet blends perfectly into the background of the image. It’s hard to describe, and perhaps even harder to see on-line or through a smart phone, but images from Fomapan film have a very cinematic effect to them. The images are sharp, but not too sharp. Despite the fact that I was working in fairly bright sun the tones are nice and even. The shadows aren’t all bunched up and yet the image still has the impact and contrast of classic black and white.

In short, everything I used to love about Fomapan film is still true, except for the price!

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Fomapan 400... Blue blue electric blue!

Am I the only one who remembers when Fomapan films had an electric blue base? I miss those days. Ultimately I know the blue base didn’t have any effect what-so-ever on your final print but it was just kind of fun to process film and marvel at the unique color. It was especially fun to bring this stuff with me to community darkrooms and have a million people ask me why my film was blue.

I don’t work with Fomapan films nearly as much as I used to. Not because I don’t like the film, I still very much do, but more because it isn’t priced as competitively as it used to be. Fomapan used to be as much as 50% cheaper than Kodak or Ilford films and now days they are roughy the same price. Add to this the fact that Ilford and Kodak films being much easier to find without having to buy online. I don’t see Fomapan products much in the brick and mortar stores whereas Kodak and Ilford films are plentiful.

I’ll post some scans of this roll in the coming weeks but one thing I really do not miss about Fomapan, especially the ISO 400 film, is the curl. You can see in this image that the only think keeping my film from curling up into a tight little roll is the fact that I put the magnifier on top of the negative sheet.

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