Something Different – Why we do FT-12!

Hand spooled 35mm films make a difference to the film photography market and provide film lovers with something new to experiment with and of course….we try everything!

You see, you need to remember that at heart we’re just like you guys…we love something rare and that hasn’t been tried by many. If there’s some existing cult following all well and good!

This one begins back in 2013 a few months after we first opened and the first of our hard-core, wanting more than the off the shelf stuff, customers manifested their true addictions!

We located a couple of sources of out of date or un common films, one of them being Eastman SO-331 a duplicating film for the motion picture industry of fine grain and panchromatic sensitivity. It had accrued something of a cult following so we gave it a punt!

Initially, not impressed with results but we persisted nonetheless and on a break in June of that year shor a couple of the rolls on our usual trip to Caen using a Nikon FM2.

We got the “Wow Factor” when these were processed with the internet prescribed one hour stand develop in Rodinal (BelliniFoto RDL)

Unusual and beautiful….now we knew why the cult status!

However…when we went looking for bulk stocks…they were non-existent, there was nothing that even came close close to the nature of this strange but lovely film. 

I was chatting to a new specialist supplier about this so he went to the factory.

The factory sent us a short length of a 35mm film that was labelled “Sound recording film”, the data sheet explaining that this film is formulated to undergo its own unique processing with chemistry that was of no use to man nor beast outside of the intended motion picture use…so we started with nothing!

Use it like SO-331 was the natural thought…so I did!  Shot at 50asa and stand developed in Rodinal for one hour. Negs came out well and truly over-developed.  Try again – stand developed for 35mins….under-developed and thus it went.  

All of a sudden, at 45 minutes stand developed in RO9 at 1:100 = exactly the right thing and we’ve been using that ever since in order to get these results

What the hell is this stuff?

We never did get a reply to that one and at that point in time we no longer cared that it wasn’t intended for photographic purposes!

As you can see from the above it makes negatives the like of which you may never have seen before…they print beautifully and scan beautifully too.

The lanscape photo there was shot through an orange filter which can help this film pull in more mid-tones…it has produced for us landscapes in with a style adopted by the great Bill Brandt

So we decided to take it to market…

Since then it has been a favourite of many many customers and is now offered disguised rebranded by a few others, some of whom have produced nice results with other development times which we have of course shared!

We have since also exprimented ourselves, testing the film in various developers, the odd results coming from motion picture developers D96 (rated 12asa) and D97 (rated 25asa)….below are samples from those experiments,

In D96 FT-12 provided a not unpleasant result but in D97 it was horrible!

You can make your own assessments of these! 😀

Horrible

Less Horrible

Pretty Horrible

Horrible

…and this is what it’s all about: Mess about, find things out but look at the good stuff…

And so to end this little demo, this lecture…a brief gallery to show some results from how we usually develop this lovely film and what it really does!

Nik & Trick Tip:  The slightly yellow base on FT-12 means that it can produce a slight cool tone when scanned as colour…wet printing can repeat this when using Cooltone paper and a developer like Ornano Bromorapid

We have always loved this grain free film for it’s rather special look, tones are what they are, usually high contrast and can be varied using fill flash, coloured filters etc…almost every film produces memorable photographs.

So that folks is the low down on Nik & Trick FT-12…it’s fun to use, great value and a little off the beaten path so we hope that you try it, and enjoy it as much as we have over the years.

It's available here, now in 24 and 36 exposure rolls