Thursday, February 18, 2016

My New ULF Film?

Before buying the camera I looked in detail and studied which film sizes are available for ULF. I found and emailed and talked to a great online resource,  Angus Parker. A great guy with lots of photographic knowledge. I highly recommend his site.
Angus Parker, ULF Film Sizes Available

The main 2 seem to be Ilford FP4 and HP5 which is available in most sizes. There are yearly runs of the bigger format films which I would join in on.

Another film I know very little about is from the old AGFA people or related to them I believe, it is called Adox CHS 100 II. This newer product Adox film is available in every conceivable size and relatively cheap (cheaper than Ilford I think). With shipping to Canada (not including duty/taxes) I can get 16x20 film for around $24CAD a sheet, which is not cheap but still an OK price for such a huge sized sheet of film. I can also get Adox CHS 100II in 11x14, 14x17, 8x20, 12x20 etc. surprisingly they also sell 20x24 film.

Kodak also does limited runs of their b/w films. I have an American contact and am on a list to get Tri-x for whatever size I need. The problem with Kodak and my favourite film Tri-x is that it will be very expensive. I love Tri-x so will probably give it a try at least in 11x14 to see how it looks and feels.

The other possibility is shooting X-Ray film that is available up to 14x17. The biggest reason to do X-ray is the cost probably $2-3 CAD a sheet! I could shoot a ton of 14x17 that way.
I have been reading on X-ray films, Angus has a great article here.
Angus Parker On X-ray Film

The last option is no film at all and doing everything on wet pate, tintypes, ambrotypes or glass negatives.

Here is the Angus Parker website, give him a read, well worth, a very knowledgeable man.
http://www.angusparkerphoto.com/