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| image from Ilford Photo |
Ilford Photo has been teasing us for the past week or so, with references to something new. Alas, they revealed their new products on 10/24 at the Photo Plus Expo in New York City. Reports are that analog photography has a much bigger presence at Photo Plus this year, which is a great sign. Ilford has introduced two new products -- their Multigrade V RC paper, and a new film in 35mm and 120 format.
Ilford Ortho Plus is an Orthochromatic film with a daylight ISO of 80. What's an Orthochromatic film, you ask? Ortho films are insensitive to red, and that means you can develop them by inspection UNDER A DARK RED SAFELIGHT. Amber (OC) safelights will fog the film. Ortho films are great for landscapes and architecture, as they tend to have finer grain than panchromatic films, and are contrastier, with red/oranges being dark. The Ilford Ortho Plus is a good sign that Ilford is listening to the photo community, as it is a bit of a niche film. The faster speed is nice. The problem with other ortho films is that they are usually very slow, and too contrasty without a special developer. While
Kodak's Kodalith (of course, no longer made) is an ortho film, it's not a good pictorial film, as it's made to do high-contrast (i.e., pure black and white) images. There are examples out there of other ortho films, most of which I have tried, and all are special-purpose emulsions that don't usually work well for pictorial use. So, I am excited about the Ilford Ortho Plus. I know the Ortho Plus film has been available as sheet film for some time, so it's good that us roll-film users get a chance to also shoot with it.
The Ilford Ortho Plus
spec sheet gives developer information as well as how to adjust for reciprocity for exposures longer than 1 second. That's important, because this film would be great for photographing waterfalls. Also, note that if you use it under tungsten lighting, the ISO rating is 40.
Anyhow, I look forward to testing a roll or two and see how it performs.
And I'll be looking for a few tutorials before I shoot the stuff! Hopefully the FPP gang can hook us up with that. Ortho is a fairly rare type of film so I'm going to bet that most of us haven't shot it. That's especially true if you've only been doing film for the last decade or less.
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