FOMAPAN 200

I am going to like Fomapan 200 once I get its peculiarities figured out.  One of the attractions of the film is the ISO200 rating which potentially provides more flexibility in responding to lighting levels than the Kentmere 100 that I have been using lately.  I started off this first roll at our favorite local craft brewery.

I shot the Fomapan 200 at a stop less than the box speed with the idea that I would be processing it in PMK Pyro which with Kentmere requires a shooting speed reduction of around a stop.  I did not find any very good guidance on line for the Fomapan/PMK combination, so I took a stab at it with 9 minutes at 23C in PMK 1+2+100.

I was very pleased with the Fomapan's fine grain which compares favorably with the slower Kentmere film.  However, most of the outdoor sunny day shots did not achieve my goal regarding tonal depth.  Sorting out the many influences on that quality involves many elements including the camera, lens, exposure and processing.

• The Nikon EM appears to be operating well, but there is a faint flare spot appearing intermittently in the images which indicates a probable need for a light seal replacement.
• The 28mm Rokunar lens has good resolution, but the wide-angle often captures a bit too much of the bright sky.
• Giving the film a full extra stop of exposure may have been a bit too much to retain good detail in both shadows and highlights on a bright day.
• My guessed-at time and temperature for the PMK processing may have significantly  missed the mark.

I am encouraged to experiment a bit with this film because of the many good results I have seen posted on line in the Fomapan 200 Creative Flickr Group.  The film seems to respond well to processing with a great variety of developers including a couple of my favorites, Rodinal and HC-110.  There are also poor to awful results posted in the same place and some naysayers.  My feeling is that the people who denigrate the film have just not taken the time to work through issues of exposure and processing.  It is instructive to examine recommendations for processing times and temps suggested by the Massive Dev Chart site for a variety of films using HC-110B:

Film	Devel	Dil	ASA/ISO	35mm	120	Sheet	Temp

Fomapan 200

HC-110

B

200

3.5

3.5

3.5

20C

Ilford SFX 200

HC-110

B

200

9

9

20C

Kodak TMax 100

HC-110

B

200

7

7

7.5

20C

So, the very short time recommended for Fomapan clearly shows a significant difference in the film's chemistry.  Most people including me would be reluctant to use times under 5 minutes, but the option to use HC-110 dilution H at twice the B dilution gets around that issue.