The good thing about Kodak, Fuji and Ilford

[werra]

ERA100 is a decent chinese film compared to Lucky and Shanghai. No curling (at least in 135, have not tried yet 4x5) or AH problems.
Too bad it's only available as 135, 4x5, 8x10 and a bit odd 7x17. For some mysterious reason there is no 120.

[Ektagraphic]

Kodak is the way.

[olehjalmar]

Interesting. My experience is that Foma 100 and 400 curl much less than Ilford FP4 and HP5. In particular, Foma 100 tends to dry completely flat. Must have something to do with different drying conditions.

I find the Foma films curl if they're freshly developed, but once they've been in a binder in a negative page for a few months, they're fine. Since I rarely print new negatives (I always seem to have a backlog) that's fine with me. The only annoyance is getting the negatives *in* the negative sheets in the first place.

[wogster]

I'll go back to the first page of posts and agree with Thomas. Dependable quality and performance is more important to me than price, funkiness or "look". I don't often get a chance to commune with my camera and nature, and I'll be darned if I'm going to risk results for a couple of bucks. Film is the cheapest part of the process when you consider time, effort, gas money and all the other things that go into a shoot. I'll stick with the Big 3.

Peter Gomena

+1

[fschifano]

Interesting. My experience is that Foma 100 and 400 curl much less than Ilford FP4 and HP5. In particular, Foma 100 tends to dry completely flat. Must have something to do with different drying conditions.

The 35 mm stuff is very flat when dry. The medium format rolls are the curly ones.

[clayne]

Why would anyone actually want to contribute to crappy Chinese-made film that can't even get the basics right? Support the companies who make quality products. Do not cheap out and effectively hurt the companies who've layed the groundwork that others try to rip off.

[cmo]

Today I friend told me about a product recall for some Rollei films, only 120 size; the manufacturer Maco had the packaging done by Foma, and it seems something went wrong. So they recall all Rollei Universal 200, Retro 400S und Superpan 200 films in 120 roll film size. Other sizes and films are not affected. Customers get Rollei Infrared films in exchange, at least in Germany it's the procedure. Those films were packaged by Ilford/Harman.

Source:
http://aphog.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=10132

Something similar had happened to that company about one year ago. A packaging problem had occurred with 120 roll film - it had been cut to 60mm width instead of 61.5mm. I think they will be very picky in the future when it comes to suppliers for packaging.

[Uncle Goose]

I must say I'm a fan of Foma in recent times. I got my first roll for free when I was in Prague buying an old Flexaret III and I was hooked on it afterwards (damn, sounds like some kind of drugs). The 120 had the tendency to unroll after shot trough so you had to be careful unloading it and the paper seal didn't always stick like it should have but these problems seem to be history. The latest batch I bought doesn't unroll anymore and the "lick it" seal has been replaced with a sticker seal much like the Fuji Across line so the quality is certainly improving and the guys at Foma actually recognize the problems they have and they do something about it. The blue base is somewhat awkward at first but ones you get used to it it's no big deal. The curling is indeed pretty much gone in the newer batches, I used to have it too but it changed and the negatives are much flatter. Foma RULZ!

[jon]

Not a big fan of lucky, mostly just from the super curl I get on it after it dries.

But I can second werra's suggestion of ERA. I've only used the 4x5, but it seems to me they have a much higher level of quality control than lucky does -- no pinholes etc so far and it gets along quite nicely with my bottle of Rodinal.