I have been a fan of Black & White Motion Picture film since I started and enjoying ORWO UN54. You know when a film just works!
Recently I shot, not for the first time, Kodak Double-X. A motion Picture Film favoured by Hollywood for Black & White scenes. Films such as Schindlers List, Raging Bull, Casino Royale to name a few. The list goes on.
The film is available from Kodak USA and Canada in 400ft reels but lucky for us film photography nuts there are a few companies spooling this in 35mm cassettes and also 120.
Here is my recent video on the film.
In this video I shot Film Photography Projects X2 and also Cinestill BWXX in 120.
Kodak suggest D96 for development but I don’t have any so I used XTOL for my films.
I shot a roll of 35mm in the Leica MP around town and developed the film in XTOL Stock for 7 minutes. It was a bright sunny day so I was anticipating a contrasty negative. Thats down to me to control if I wanted to by dropping a minute or two off the development but I decided to develop for 7 minutes.
Here are the photographs scanned. I definitely should have knocked a minute or so off the development time! Or gone for a weaker dilution of say 1:1 or 1:2.
I then used the Yashica Mat124G medium format camera for a few portraits using Cinestill BWXX.
For the lighting I used natural window light and had my Wife holding a reflector to bounce some light back into the girls.
I was amazed at the sharpness and detail of this film. Even the dynamic range in the 35mm photographs.
I wonder how this film compares to my fav ORWO UN54! Maybe I will have to put the two head to head!
Here are some links to where you can buy this film.
