Nik & Trick Films – Filmotec DP-3

What is it?
Filmotech DP-3 is a duplicating positive film that is used for the production of intermediate positives (master positives) in the motion picture industry.

A panchromatic film for duplicating from black & white negatives as well as from colour negatives producing well-balanced grey values referring to original colours.

Special features of this film are the excellent (reads amazing) resolving power and the extraordinary fine grain….and trust me, this is the finest grain film that I have ever come across.

Who makes it?
It is made in the Orwo Factory in East Germany and is supplied in 1000ft (305m) lengths

The above is condensed from the factory blurb….

In real and practical terms there are three catches with this film; the lengths it comes in, it starts life at just 3asa (don’t give up here) and it has not been intended for use in a camera for stills photography so as yet there are very few development timings available.

BUT!! It does process very beautifully in the usual developers, such as Xtol and Rodinal etc so be assured that this has a good future!

 

The Nik & Trick DP-3 story:

We try anything and everything that comes out of film factories that we can get out hands on. This came up on the radar and we asked nicely and our agent got the factory to send us a sample to play with….and that’s exactly what we did!

Clearly 3asa, although great for many purposes, would make this a film that people would be scared of (folk worry without need that less than 100asa is a problem and our target was 25asa, just 2 stops down!)

We needed to experiment and see how far it would push. Most black and white films will make at least 21/2 stops or more but this is a specialist film with a specialist emulsion aimed at producing pure detail in a specialised environment in specialist equipment! So we couldn’t be totally sure to be honest.

However, almost straight away it became abundantly obvious that this was nice stuff, something a bit special.

Initial results looked great and after tweaking dev times the potential just kept on coming; 6asa – lovely, 12asa beautiful and then two or three experiments later we got to 25asa and were amazed at the photos we were looking at.

The tonal range of this film is simply stunning. It really does have that “Film Noir” feel to it….results are pretty consistent on this.

Detail, again, is simply stunning. Does exactly what it says on the tin, as the saying goes, Orwo’s claims are completely correct and it’s incredible resolving power is emphasised by the near total absence of grain at even very close up viewing.

This film is so good in fact, here at Nik & Trick we now no longer offer mainline 35mm low speed films such as CMS20 and Rollei RPX25. We think that those fail to come close to this…

50asa? It has been suggested but we’re seeing some blowing out in lighter areas in certain extreme conditions so feel that once over 32asa it will “fall off the edge”….but anyone’s welcome to try, and please do!

More timings are still needed for more developers. Our time constraints mean that currently we have times for RO9 and Xtol, it loves both!

Next up is HC-110, the smoothest tonal developer and one that that we think will make for even better tones that we already have from this unique film already!

We have plenty of stock of this film and it is readily available in store and via our online shop 

---

 

 

 

Recently we took into stock a whole heap of Leica R Series kit, in included, amongst other things, two R7 bodies loads of lovely lenses including an 80mm f1.4 and a 21mm Super-Angulon – the best and worst of lenses for making portraits…..So for fun we put them to work.

The choice of film for this series of sittings was DP-3 and here are some of the results…we feel that this must be one of the best portrait films around now.

 

All featured photographs are scanned photos…they will be even better when printed in the darkroom.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]