created/modified 2021-03-03
Fomapan 100 B&W Film Profile/Review
This tech page is for Foma Fomapan 100 Film, or FOMAPAN_100. This is a medium speed B&W film that comes in 35mm roll, 120 roll, and various sheet sizes. FOMAPAN_100 is repackaged as Freestyle Photographic’s Arista.EDU Ultra house brand film, and also as of late 2017, Lomography’s Earl Grey 100 film, so this tech sheet covers all three films under this one page. This film is a panchromatically sensitized, black-and-white negative film designed for taking photographs. The film meets high requirements for low granularity, high resolving power and contour sharpness and a wide range of halftones.
Development
There are many ways to develop FOMAPAN_100. Following Foma’s recommended development in their tech sheet is a good place to start if you want to develop this film yourself. If you send your film in to us here at Simple Film Lab, we develop FOMAPAN_100 with Ilford replenished Ilfotech DD developer with constant rotary agitation as standard practice.
Exposure Guidance
There are many ways to meter and expose FOMAPAN_100. If sending FOMAPAN_100 in to Simple Film Lab to process and scan, we recommend using EI 80 or 64 and taking an incident light reading of the darkest part of the scene you want to retain details in and subtracting 2 stops of exposure from that reading. For example, if the darkest part of the scene that you want to retain detail in reads 1/125 shutter, f/4.0 at ISO 80, either set the shutter to 1/500 or close down the aperture to f/8.0, or a combination of the two to reduce the exposure by two stops. If you don’t have a light meter, then set your camera exposure compensation to +1 stop, and that will generally result in an acceptable exposure for most situations once scanned in and density corrected.
Characteristic Curve
Using the development described above, here’s the characteristic curve for the standard ISO contrast index of 0.62, 0.56 is almost exactly the same, though ever so lightly flatter:
The scale along the bottom is exposure EVs, the scale along the left is density as seen by the film scanner, meaning raw ADC integer values. The EV 0 mark is an 18% exposure card exposed correctly via an incident light reading with a studio strobe and a Sekonic light meter through a T-Stop rated lens. Every dot along the curve is a full stop of light. This is the curve used to linearize the emulsion when scanned in and converted to an Adobe Digital Negative file.
Dynamic Range/Exposure Latitude
FOMAPAN_100 has a good amount of dynamic range. If exposed and developed as described above, on the shadow side, the toe of FOMAPAN_100 is -4 EV with the film base plus fog by -5 EV with film/scanner noise down to about -6 EV. In Adobe Lightroom, this is good black performance as any tone values from -5 to -6 EV will register as less than 1% luminance in the Develop Module with the default contrast and black level. On the highlight side, FOMAPAN_100 is reasonable. We’ve exposed and linearized up to +9 EV with film/scanner noise up to +10 EV. In Adobe Lightroom +7 EV registers as 100% luminance in the Develop Module, so the highlight retention of FOMAPAN_100 is good. With the above information, in Adobe Lightroom, the visible dynamic range of an exposure is +7 EV to -5 EV. FOMAPAN_100 provides reasonable under exposure protection and 2-3 stops of over exposure protection while still maintaining acceptable black levels and full highlight retention for the full visible dynamic range in Adobe Lightroom. These over-under limits can be exceeded if you are OK with reduced performance at the extremes of the exposure scale.
Resolution/Grain
FOMAPAN_100 has good resolution for a 100 speed film. Looking at Foma’s spec sheet, at 50% contrast, FOMAPAN_100 is about 30 line-pairs per mm of film. Looking at a film scan of a 135 frame at 1:1, its grain structure is present, but there isn’t really anything objectionable about it. I’d rate it as middle of the road in terms of resolution for a 100 speed film. It has marginally more resolution than Fomapan 200 and 400. In terms of grain, Foma lists it as a granularity of 13.5, so it’s got grain, but given that it’s a traditional grained film, it’s pretty pleasant. 400TX has a listed granularity of 17, so it’s quite a bit finer grained than 400TX.
Sample Images
Here’s a link to a Flickr Album of more images shot on Fomapan 100. I’ll add more images as I have them available.
Sample DNG Files
As part of this tech sheet/film review I’m making a ZIP file available that contains some Adobe DNG files that are a sample of what you would receive if you sent your film into Simple Film Lab to process and scan. It’s relatively large, but if you want to see what you can get, worth a look. Click Here
Purchase
If you wish to purchase this film, you can do so on our store located here.
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