play time

When I ordered some cine film from my usual source – Nik and Trick in the UK -, Richard was so kind to throw in a roll of Fuji Eterna 250D for me to test. He knows that I like to play with unusual film stock, so he thought I’d get a kick out of this one. And he was right! I saved it for a special occasion and shot it during a trip in May. After solving my C41 development problems I then finally decided to process those rolls and give remjet removal a try to finish off my 2nd litre of Fuji chemicals. The remjet removal was very easy indeed, at least for this Fuji Eterna roll, and only a little bit messy for the Kodak stuff. With the Fuji stock the remjet just comes off without any wiping after a bit of a shake in a bicarbonate water mix. I used 4 tea spoons of bicarbonate for 500ml water at process temperature and then agitated vigorously. Then I rinsed until the water was clear and developed normally. The Kodak stuff needed a wipe down after processing and I don’t know how, but somehow I managed not to cover myself in remjet gunk although it was dripping all over the place. It wasn’t an entirely successful first attempt either: When wiping the Kodak stuff I forgot to wipe the emulsion side, so there is some residue left that I will probably try to remove tomorrow. Generally removing the remjet was much easier than I expected though, especially for the Fuji stock.

The Pakon of course couldn’t make heads nor tails of it, without a DX code and looking quite a bit different from normal C41 film, so I scanned the roll as raw and corrected the pictures with the help of ColorPerfect. Not exactly the easiest or fastest process, but I think they turned out quite alright. The Fuji stuff is a little strange with lots of cyan and magenta, but it held up well in all sorts of situations and could be made to look quite natural by just balancing the channels. I especially like the way it handled under tungsten lighting in the subway shots. Similar conditions with standard C41 can result in pretty funky uncorrectable colour casts that look rather unnatural, but with this film I like how it looked in the end. My verdict? Interesting stock! Like all Fuji stock it seems to be a bit on the magenta side which doesn’t always work well with European skin tones – It quickly turns a slightly pink skin colour into somewhat of a violent sunburn (imagine what a crab colour sunburn would look like)! However, since it was very sunny indeed and a lot of tourists don’t seem to mind a bit of melanoma, maybe it was actually rather accurate, who knows! In any case, I enjoyed playing with this. Thanks Richard!

All pictures taken with: Leica M6 + Zeiss ZM C-Biogon 35mm f/2.8.
Fuji Eterna 250D @400 developed in Fuji Hunt C41 Kit, no push.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

Just a moment later the leash got tangled up.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

I just had to take this picture.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

The roses …! Probably waiting for someone.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

I guess he refused to walk any further.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

Eating bananas in public can be rather difficult.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

Nice view! Totally worth the hike up the hill.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

They obviously spend too much time together.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

There is one more dog in the picture than you’d expect.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

We were looking for the metro for a while and thought we might be able to avoid the stairs. In the end it was the only way to go though. And yes, there is an escalator going up the hill … we wouldn’t have made it otherwise.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

An escalator like that would have made my life a lot simpler when I lived in Brighton.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

She actually seemed to come out of nowhere. Glad I caught her at all!

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

I could have colour corrected this better, but it looked much more like a space ship this way.

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

© Lilly Schwartz 2015

This stuff holds up rather well under tungsten lighting. Those two were very strange by the way … dancers if I remember correctly.

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