A New High-Speed Colour Film - Aurora 800
It seems you can barely go a month without the announcement of a new film. I recently tried a few rolls of the brand new Harman Phoenix 200 (You can read my review of it here). It was cool because it was a truly new film emulsion being made. It isn’t the easiest film to use but I enjoyed trying it and looking forward to see where Harman goes with it next. Not long after we heard that FlicFilm would be releasing a new high-speed film. Now we can be certain that FlicFilm didn’t make this film from scratch but instead is respooling it from a another manufacturer. Online guesses seem to think that it is Kodak 800, which usually goes in disposable cameras and is also likely the same stock as Lomography 800, which has been around for awhile. There are not a lot of high-speed film choices anymore and so when I heard that Camera Traders would be getting it in, I was down there as soon as possible to pick-up a couple of rolls.
FlicFilm is a small company out of Southern Alberta. Camera Traders carries a lot of their products and I try and use them whenever it is practical, both because it is Canadian and because their products are really quite good. FlicFilm’s Elektra 100 is my go-to summer daylight film (you can read my review here) and I use two of their products for my black and white film development. Being able to broaden my ability to use FlicFilm products in some other lights and times of the year was an interesting prospect. That said, I should say I haven’t shot a lot of films with higher than 400 ISOs, as I don’t often shoot film at night or with high shutter speed, but it is definitely something I need to do more.
Anyways, after I bought a couple of rolls I thought I would try it out and see how it performed in some different scenarios around the city. I would say that overall I am very impressed with it. I did try it some darker spots and I guess I thought it would resolve the shadows more than it did, though it could easily have been my settings. In daylight, even dimming daylight of the early evening, it is a beautiful film. I will definitely try it out a couple more times, maybe on a tripod in the evening downtown to get the lights.
Have a look at the images below and let me know what you think! Is this a film you would like to try out? Also if you have tried it and have any tips or tricks to getting the most out of it, please let me know.
As a separate note on photography, I will be showing some of my better shots at the upcoming Fernwood Art Stroll. I will be providing more information on this over the next few weeks.