Film and Darkroom

127 Stories, Experiments, Workflows, Reviews

Kodak Tri-X 400 Film Review
Instant Classic Kodak Grain & Contrast
July 3, 2025
Tri-X is one of Kodak’s best-recognized films that has been around for over 85 years. In this review, I’ll introduce you to the history that lends significance to this film as well as the technical aspects, like the grain structure and dynamic range, that make it an excellent choice for home and lab scanning. I will also briefly compare Kodak Tri-X to the other long-standing ISO 400 black-and-white photographer favourite, Ilford HP5+ and explain the difference between Tri-X and T-Max.
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Welcome to Karmir Film Lab in Yerevan!
A Creative Stronghold for Film Photographers in the Caucasus
June 4, 2025
An article about a film lab and a creative hub in Yerevan.
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Where to Develop, Scan, and Print Film in Bangkok
May 12, 2025
Finding the film you want in Bangkok can be a huge challenge, and if you want your transparencies or negatives scanned on something higher-end than a Noritsu or Fuji Frontier, most people will tell you it’s impossible. (Fortunately, they’re wrong!) This article covers a wide range of services: film labs for E-6, ECN-2, B&W, and C41 processing, as well as places to buy film and get film scanned.
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Kodak Vision 3 500T 5219/7219 Film Review
Shot as Stills and Developed in C-41
May 5, 2025
Though it has been designed for movies, this film sees strong popularity amongst still photographers for its tungsten-balanced colour palette, fine grain, high ISO, wide dynamic range, and great response to cross-processing. In this review, I’ll cover all the technical properties and creative possibilities of using the Kodak Vision 3 500T, compare it to CineStill 800T, and explain Kodak’s recent crackdown on the sales of this film to individual photographers.
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Where to Develop, Scan, and Print Film in Bali
May 2, 2025
Bali has quite a few film labs with a large variety of services offered by each. Here’s a non-exhaustive summary of the options, locations, prices, and notes of the labs we tried.
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“Bluescaling” Lomochrome Turquoise
Going Beyond Redscaling for the Rare, Unseen Colours on Film
April 23, 2025
Lomochrome Turquoise is a false-colour negative film designed by Lomography to render freaky orange, cobalt, and marine palettes. Out of the box, this emulsion is already incredibly unique, but it can be pushed even further for a rare and wild look.
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Redscaling Lomochrome Purple
What Happens if You Shoot False-Colour Film “The Wrong Way?”
April 17, 2025
Redscaling means exposing the backside of colour film, which usually makes moody, red-dominant photos. But that’s on regular film. Lomochrome Purple isn’t regular — it’s a false-colour film, which means it behaves differently when redscaled. In this article, I’ll share some thoughts and samples from my week-long experiment shooting Lomochrome Purle loaded “the wrong way” with a dense green filter.
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“Greenscaling” Aerochrome
The World’s First and Attempt to Redscale Colour Infrared Film¹
April 8, 2025
Aerochrome is one of the most expensive and difficult films to shoot. This may be why few have experimented with this stock. Today, I’m challenging those boundaries with the world’s first attempt to redscale a.k.a. “greenscale” this colour infrared film.
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Kodak Vision 3 250D 5207/7207 Film Review
Shot as Stills and Developed in C-41
February 18, 2025
Kodak Vision 3 250D is a colour-negative film made for motion picture cameras. Its image quality is on par with Kodak Portra 400 and other colour-accurate fine-grained low-contrast emulsions when developed in ECN-2. But for this review, I’m processing it in C-41. I also compare my results to CineStill 400D, which has been claimed by many to be 250D w/o the remjet. (It is not.)
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Fujifilm 400 Color Negative Film Review
An Unexpected Alliance With Kodak. Is This Just Ultramax?
January 21, 2025
Fujifilm 400 Speed Film is a new offering by a Japanese manufacturer made in the USA. It is a replacement for their earlier made-in-Japan Fujicolor Superia X-Tra, which, at some point, used a fourth cyan-sensitive colour layer to produce better tonality in mixed lighting—a technology famously used in their legendary Fijicolor Pro 400H emulsion. In this review, I’ll examine this film’s origins and technical and visual properties. I will also discuss how it may be the same as and different from the Kodak Ultramax 400.
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Adox CMS 20 II: An Ultra-High Resolution Film Review
Tested With Adotech IV and a 400-Megapixel Scan
January 10, 2025
In this review, I share my experience shooting and processing this film with the specialized Adotech CMS IV developer as well as the non-specialized Ilford DD-X, discuss its technical specifications, and share the results of my attempt to produce a 400-megapixel scan (the absolute maximum I’m capable with my current hardware and software).
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Pushing Ilford HP5+ to ISO 100,000
Samples, Recipe, Discussion, and Development Times
January 8, 2025
This article is a follow-up to yesterday’s experiment with pulling HP5+ to ISO 3; whereas the former was fairly easy to do, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you try what I’m about to share with you here. Still, this resource comes with all the techniques and recipes necessary to replicate the experiment, as well as suggested times for developing HP5+ at EI 12800, 25600, and 51200.
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Pulling Ilford HP5+ to ISO 3
Samples, Recipe, Discussion, and Development Times
January 7, 2025
Ilford HP5+ is a ninety-year-old¹ black-and-white film known for its versatility, sharpness, and controlled response to various development methods. Many photographers love to push-process it and occasionally pull-process. Yet, to my knowledge, no one has pull-processed it to this extreme; thus, this may be the first time anyone has ever shared the technique and the results with the HP5+ shot as if it’s an ISO 3 film.
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A Unique Look? Harman Phoenix 200 in E-6 With Flash

November 21, 2024
Typically, Harman Phoenix is processed with C-41 chemistry, but I decided to go a different route and try E-6. Why? I was after something perhaps more unique — a shift in colour that would add extra character and depth to a project I was working on (more about that later). The idea was to use the film to make it feel less like a straightforward documentary and more like a visual statement.
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Kodak Vision 3 50D 5203/7203 Film Review
Shot as Stills and Developed in C-41
November 12, 2024
Kodak Vision 3 50D 5203/7203 colour negative film was designed for movie cameras. But in the mid-2010s, CineStill popularized its use in SLRs and rangefinders with a remjet-less version, the 50D. As the availability of ECN-2 developers increased, the original Kodak (non-CineStill) version of this film also began to gain popularity amongst us still photographers. In this review, I’ll cover all the technical specifications, share samples, and review the various ways of getting hold of and developing this film.
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Film Ferrania Orto 50 Film Review
High-Contrast and Orthochromaticism (With and Without a Green Filter)
November 5, 2024
Film Ferrania’s Orto 50 is a newly reissued (2023)¹ orthochromatic black-and-white film by the famous Italian film factory. It features fine grain, high contrast, and blue light sensitivity (which makes it blind to the red colours). Orto 50 shares its fine grain, strong contrast, and some development times with Film Ferrania’s first product, P30 — but it’s not the same film.
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Photographers Are Terrible at Identifying Most B&W Films
573 Participants Guessed Correctly Just 37.6% of the Time
October 28, 2024
What guides your choice of black-and-white film? Is it the contrast, the grain, or something else? Last year, I built a game, “What The Film ?!” with Daren and Yvonne. It randomized black-and-white photos and asked players to guess what film they were shot on. This weekend, I brushed through the entries and found a few interesting stats about our understanding of black-and-white films… One of which is our apparent inability to identify most of them correctly.
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Lomography Color Negative 800 Film Review
A Portra in Disguise?
October 18, 2024
Lomography Color Negative 800 film is a high-speed medium-high saturation film sold in triple packs of 35mm and 120 rolls. It features accurate colour reproduction and fine grain. Though Lomography does not reveal the exact origins of this film, it’s most likely manufactured by Kodak — but it’s not the same as Portra 800 — as the controlled experiments suggest.
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Fujifilm Fujicolor PRO 400H Film Review
Discontinued but Not Forgotten
September 27, 2024
Fujifilm Fujicolor Pro 400H is a pro-grade colour negative film with excellent dynamic range and unique colour reproduction thanks to its fourth colour layer. In this review, I’ll cover my experience with this film in 35mm and medium format, share a few samples, and discuss its technical properties.
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Kiki Pan 320 Film Review
Meow 🐾
September 26, 2024
Kiki Pan 320 is a medium-speed black-and-white film by a Hong Kong analogue photography distributor, Camera Film Photo. Kiki Pan is a German-made emulsion packed in a super-cute box with its DX-coded canister and negatives featuring a design inspired by the shop’s resident cat, Kiki. 🐾
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