Fomapan FomaOrtho 400

FomaOrtho 400 is one of those films you have no idea what to expect once you scan it. I have to admit I had my worries, having a few shots which I remembered were valuable for me in my street photography journey. But I was surprised. Let me show you...

FomaOrtho 400

This film is the only product on the market in the orthochromatic (not sensitive to red light) category with a speed of 400 (ISO) which is what I want for my street photography, to be able to use shutter speeds of 1/200 and above. Yes, I do like to freeze the motion in most of the cases. 

This film is manufactured in Czech Republic and comes in a metal container, unlike many Foma films which are now made in plastic (and it really does not matter). The price is incredibly good, but here I guess it depends where you are in the world. I buy it in Prague for about 7 Euro a roll, which is amazing given the current film prices. I cannot comment on the Fomapan quality since I have very little experience with them, but this film is TOTALLY worth the money. It is not perfect, but the imperfections give it the old, retro and warm character. And photography is not about perfection anyhow. 

Equipment used and processing

I only have one film camera, a Pentax Spotmatic F, probably from 1973 which, for this film, I paired with a Super-Takumar 135mm f/3.5 lens (not SMC) and decided to focus on candid street portraits. 

For scanning the film, I used my trusted Valoi Easy 35 mounted on my 7 Artisans 60mm Macro lens and my Fujifilm X-T50 camera, a trusted setup allowing me to get 40MP full resolution scans of the negatives and have full flexibility in editing them. Lab scans are either low quality and cheap or high quality RAW but very pricy. For the price of 7 scans, I can buy the Valoi scanner and do it at home. Becasue I rarely shoot film, getting the chemicals for developing it is not really a good spend of my money, so I prefer to take it to my trusted lab. 

Editing was done in darktable and modules used are: negadoctor, exposure, local contrast and tone equilizer. I will let you enjoy the results. I am genuinely impressed by the character this film has. It is imperfect, but that is the best flavor of the game. 

Conclusion

If you feel you are stuck and have no idea what to photograph anymore, get yourself a FomaOrtho 400 film. The raw joy and satisfaction you will get once you hold the photographs in your hands will inspire you and motivate to go out and shoot.