The Axis Trio strikes back hard! Seeing all the Allied warbirds was too much for them. Although it was a perfect day to try out the Ferrania P30 Alpha film for the first time, I underexposed the film by at least a stop (and did in my Spotmatic too, shooting Tri-X). Thankfully, it wasn’t a big deal:
Even though underexposed, there was plenty of detail, which I am extremely happy about! The shots were completely usable, though like I said in my previous post, bumping up the contrast so much did start revealing lots of dust and scratches, water spots, etc, and I didn’t have the same problem with the Tri-X (see below). I will say that my local camera store isn’t one of the labs that Ferrania recommends.
Here is all that shooting info again:
Scanned myself with the Pakon F335, edited in Photoshop
D-76 stock at 8min (I think, or it could have been 9min…it was developed by my local camera store)
Canon 7 with the Leitz 35mm f/3.5 Summaron
Very overcast day
Shutter speeds were nominally around 1/125 at f/8 (I was shooting at around ASA100)
Tri-X definitely has a different look to it, slightly more consistent when underexposed I’d say (the middle shot was overexposed by a stop I think).
Alright, here’s the thing with the P30: It’s so fine-grained that I expected it to be much sharper than this, and it looks soft as butter. I’m not completely convinced it wasn’t my lens, but comparing it to other shots on Double-X those look much sharper. Here’s a 100% crop from my scan:
So the other possibility is that P30 is sufficiently thicker (or thinner?) than regular film to be out of focus in my Pakon, so I will have to rescan both negatives making sure I refocus using some P30 film. Then I will have to refocus again with something like Tri-X, for everything else I scan. It’s on the agenda, but I haven’t quite found time yet.
This is one of the best exposed shots I had. And here’s the other one from the last post:
And one last one, this is an extreme example of burning in the sky, just to see what was possible:
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The Resurrected Camera 
I haven’t shot Ferrania yet, but I notice that Agfa APX100 with my Summar 50mm seem soft when I scan them on my Epson V3000. I will be scanning some Ektar later this week shot with a new Voigtlander Color Skopar 35mm. Older slides and color negatives originally shot with a Nikon 50mm or 105mm are fine.
Thanks for the thoughts. Old Leitz lenses from the ’40s and ’50s aren’t exactly the sharpest ever! Still, you’d probably get better scans with a non-flatbed scanner too…