Trying Some Orthochromatic Films
If you have been reading my blog for a while, and paying attention to the photography posts in particular, you would know that I like to try lots of different types of film. Many photographers find the one that works best for them and just continue to shoot it. That is not to say I don’t have my favourites. For a sunny summer day, using the Flic Film Elektra 100 is pretty much my go to. If I want some colour photos and it is winter in Victoria, I will usually go for the Flic Film Aurora 800 (if I can find any on the shelves). For black and white, while I will generally stick with something pretty standard like Kodak TMax 400, or if I want to have some fun, and want the photos to be a little more gritty, I will go for one of the Fomapan black and whites (usually the 200). With both of those black white films, they are panchromatic film, which means that they are sensitive to the entire colour spectrum, despite the fact that they reproduce those colours in shades of grey rather then in colour. If you are wanting to take your black and white photos to a different level of old fashioned-ness though, you will want to use an orthochromatic film.
Orthochromatic film is a much older form of film, originally developed in the 1870’s. The difference between it and panchromatic film is the spectrum of colours that it is sensitive to. Panchromatic film can see an almost full spectrum of colours from blue through green to red. Orthochromatic films are sensitive to the blue end of the spectrum and to lessoning degrees towards the red. This means that you will almost always blow out your blues and anything red will come back completely black. You can see the impact of this in early black and white movies where apparently, make-up had to be applied to actors in a way that they would show up so that it appeared that they were wearing normal makeup. This meant that lipstick had to be blue or green to appear normal on them.
One of the things I enjoy about shooting in black and white is that it allows our eyes to look at a scene in a very different way that is not so focused on the colours, but instead on what is contained within the image. Orthochromatic film takes this even a step further and creates a whole new sense of place in your photos by making our brain try and re-read an image, especially if it is somewhere familiar.
Over the last couple of months, I have tried out a couple of different Orthochromatic films, Foma Ortho 400 and Ferrania Orto 50. There are some differences between them, the biggest being the ISO. That said both films have a similar feel. I have shared a photo set from each of them here. Fomapan is a film company out of the Czech Republic and as I said, I shoot their panchromatic films quite regularly, as they are fairly inexpnsive. The Foma Ortho 400 is a little more fine grained than their other films. Ferrania, as the name might suggest, is out of Italy. It is near impossible to get any right at the moment unless you go on Ebay or Etsy. According to Reddit, the company has been recently bought by Orwo, another European company and production should be back soon.
Foma Ortho 400
Ferrania Orto 50
If you are wanting to try some orthochromatic film, you can definitely pick up some of the Foma Ortho 400 at Camera Traders. They also usually have the Film Washi F, which is called a “fluorographic film” but I believe it is also orthochromatic. The Ferrania Orto, as I said above, is a little harder to find, I got my roll on a trip to Portland last year, though I can see that you can apparently order it from Downtown Camera out of Toronto.
Let me know what you think of the photos and orthochromatic film generally, in the comments. Also if you are interested in getting a little more serious about your photography, I am leading another photography workshop and photo walk at the Vancouver Island School of Art in October. More details are available here. Talk to all of you soon.
