Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Regular readers of this blog and my car photography blog know that I enjoy a hearty cup of Earl Grey tea in the morning. If you watched my last podcast, you know I keep a daily journal using a Moleskine notebook and write in it with a fountain pen. As mentioned in that podcast, I use fountain pens for journaling as well as collecting quotes and jotting down ideas for blog posts like this one. What you may not know is that my carbon fiber Waterford fountain pen is filled with Earl Grey ink from Diamine. And to continue that trend, I recently shot Lomography’s Earl Grey film at the Rocky Mountain La-la-Palooza Show and Shine/Cruise-In that was held in Broomfield, Colorado.
Lomography’s Earl Grey was part of May’s Joe’s Film Box and is rated as an ISO 100 black & white, “panchromatic” negative film that, according to Blue Moon Camera and Machine, is comparable and “possibly the exact same as” Fomapan 100 or Kentmere 100.
Let’s compare: Lomography says their film has ” a classic look and feel with even tonality and rich contrast.” Fomapan 100 Creative is a black & white negative film that’s characterized by high resolution, wide exposure latitude and fine grain. Kentmere 100, on the other hand, has relatively fine grain with medium contrast, subtle tones, and good exposure latitude. So which one is it or is it it’s own thing? I decided to find out and for the next two Joe’s Film Box will include the Fomapan and Kentmere films— for June it’s Fomapan—and after I’ve tested all three will try to make an evaluation of all three emulsions in an upcoming podcast for my YouTube channel.
Like Lomography Redscale XR, Earl Grey is sold in a three-pack. Blue Moon Camera will sell you a single roll but it comes in a naked cassette. Before packing for shipment to The Darkroom I dug into my collection of film canisters putting the film in one of them for protection during USPS shipment to California. Along with my roll of Adox 100 from my Shoot-a-Frame-a-Day project, it was shipped for processing and scanning on May 31. I received an email acknowledging the lab’s receipt of the film on June 3’rd and was notified that scans were available for viewing and download on Sunday June 5. The film was being shipped back to me the next day. As I write this it hasn’t arrived.
Initial Impressions
While both Fomapan and Kentmere claim to have fine or relatively fine grain, Earl Grey seems grainy especially for a 100 ISO film. More noticeably grainier than the Adox CHS 100 II I was concurrently shooting in my Canon AE-1 as part of my Snap a Frame a Day project for National Photo Month.
Rather than acting as a panchromatic film, Earl Grey has a definite orthochromatic feel that renders red and any color containing red to look dark and rich. I would like to say the 2048×3072 scans were clean and bright but instead they demonstrably showed the film’s compressed dynamic range and an overall sooty look that added a vintage look to some of the photographs that I sort-of liked for some subject matter, like the Buick’s grille above. The film also produced the classic, white (“bald headed”) skies that orthochromatic films produce that you can see in the photograph at left, You either like this look or you don’t.
Do I like Earl Grey film? Much like there is “no crying in baseball” I think there are no bad films. Every film’s unique characteristics make them suitable for some kind of imagery, even if it may not be the kind of photographs you like to make.
I have mixed emotion about Earl Grey because…This film would not be my first choice photographing cars but I think there is no one film that’s perfect for photographing every kind of subject. After a critical look at the Lomo’s negatives when they arrive I will try to apply what I leaned from shooting when working with Fomapan 100 that’s part of the June Joe Film Box. And, you know, see what happens. Meanwhile I do like the having the film available as a choice and look forward to seeing if it is, indeed, Fomapan or Kentmere. If it is one of these film, I’ll opt for one of them because Earl Grey because, like all Lomography films, it’s more expensive than the others.
If you would like to send me another kind of film to review or any other stuff that could be used for these posts and my videos you can mail it to: Joe Farace, PO BOX 2081, PARKER, CO 80134