Gast
Hello,
Given that a lot of negative things have been said about Fortepan films in various places, I’d like to ask you the following question here:
Apparently, the FP400 has been reformulated since the start of the year and is said to be similar or identical to the HP5plus. Has the quality improved now? Is it comparable to the HP5? Has anyone had any experience with it and can offer me some advice? (I’m interested in both positive and negative experiences).
Many thanks for your input
Wolfgang
Gast
Hello Wolfgang,
The new Fortepan 400 KB is actually no longer a Forte but an HP5.
However, the 400-speed roll films and sheet films are still Forte, because Ilford doesn’t supply roll film base material.
We’ll have to wait and see whether Forte is doing itself a big favour by selling a completely different black-and-white film as roll film.
As we have a great many fans of the original material (and just as many detractors – opinions are more divided on this film than on others, which is very interesting to observe), we’ll continue to supply the original, but in the improved version.
The improvements to the Classicpan films were already made over the course of last year.
As we always supply fresh stock (and therefore sometimes can’t supply at all for short periods ;-) the new emulsions for the 200 in August and the 400 in November were introduced here (i.e. in Classic packaging).
However, the film is not fundamentally different.
As mentioned above, we have a great many regular customers who love this material. Most of these customers are in the USA and buy the film as a sheet film.
There are hundreds of posts in American newsgroups about how wonderfully the 200 performs in ABC Pyro or PMK. These people love this material for its ‘flat curve’ and its unique grey-scale reproduction. In short, these are the customers who ask themselves what this material can offer them and what adjustments they need to make in the process to achieve that.
The critics are mostly fine grain enthusiasts who tear any film that isn’t fine grain to shreds, or those who carry out elaborate lab tests to determine the effective speed and the true Dmax, and ultimately compare numbers rather than images. This is a somewhat brief summary and certainly won’t do everyone justice, but broadly speaking, this is our experience of how such divided camps come about.
Improvements:
Classicpan fans have given us some suggestions on how the material could be improved. These included, amongst other things, increasing the DMax and the effective speed. Both have been achieved with the modification of the film. The 200 is now a really good film. Excellent as roll or sheet film when grey tones are preferred over fine grain. The 400 is also superb in terms of grey tones and, if you like its look, certainly unique, but as far as effective DMax and effective speed are concerned, it doesn’t quite match up to HP5 (it sits at 85–90% of HP5’s technical values).
It still has its place, however, as it has a different look, as mentioned, and is also the only film available in every conceivable sheet film size. Ilford is certainly cutting costs here.
But: this does not change what the most vocal critics of Classicpan take issue with. The fine grain nature of the emulsion and its susceptibility to scratches remain the same. The former can be addressed with fine grain developers, pyro processing or a change of film format, whilst the latter requires a few drops of hardener in the stop bath.
The film exhibits edge effects, grain and grey tones. These are all characteristics that enhance the visual sharpness and brilliance of the images and have, for the most part, been sacrificed in favour of fine grain modern emulsions. Whether this makes it the number one 35mm film, however, remains to be seen.
Greetings from Berlin,
Mirko
www.fotoimpex.de
