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Fomapan 100 Classic

Known/rumored respoolings: Arista.EDU 100.

Observations: Like other Fomapan films, I really wanted to like this film stock mainly because of its low price. There’s a certain pleasure that comes out of shooting a cheap film stock. When my per-frame cost is low, I feel a sense of freedom and looseness with my camera in hand. But across the entire Fomapan series, contrast is just a bit too strong for me with shadow brightness falling off especially dramatically. This slowest of the three behaves the best for me. Especially when shooting scenes that have a lot of variation between brightly lit and shaded regions, shadow detail is not completely lost, but it is definitely quite dark. On the upside, though, Fomapan 100 does have fairly fine grain.

Further reading: bluemooncameracodex.com, alexluyckx.com.

Left: Nikon F with Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 lens, Arista.EDU 100 film. This is a decent example of the high-contrast look of Fomapan 100. Right: Nikon F with Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 lens, Arista.EDU 100 film. Although I probably underexposed this image, I also think that, had I given it a bit slower shutter speed, I would have blown out highlights in the background.
Left: Nikon F with Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 lens, Arista.EDU 100 film. The upper third of this image is well exposed, but shadows appear disappointingly dark. Right: Nikon F with Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 lens, Arista.EDU 100 film. The grey tones in the park path appear good at the expense of a near absence of shadow detail in the the middle left of this image.