July 12, 2011

Rollei Retro 80s again

Hi everybody,

the Rollei Retro 80s, that in fact is an aerial film from Agfa-Gevaert/Belgium, I used it once before and the film shows extraordinary sharpness and finest grain together with an unusual tonal range. The 80s is extended sensitized for the near IR-range, not as much as the Efke, but still shows the typical IR effect. I supposed that optimal results would be achieved if an EI of 50 - 100 will be used at about 40 - 50 minutes stand development and it seems to be the sweet spot for this film. Gerald already has shown beautiful infrared pictures with this film on flickr, and Yannick uses a slightly different setup with a IR-filter that probably is not as strong as Geralds, and also does fine regular, non-IR photography with this film. It's a matter of taste, but I prefer the decent wood effect over the one from the Efke. The latter may look a bit overdone, the 80s has a more "natural" look imho.

Also non-IR photography works beautiful with the 80s, due to it's sensitization it's predestined for landscapes, but also portraiture works very nice and eases some skin irritations due to the low blue sensitivity. So this film behaves quite contrary to an orthopanchromatic film. A great film for many purposes and with a unique look. But now let's read and see what Yannick did with
this film. Thank you very much for your contribution, Yannick. Cheers - Reinhold


"Thanks to Gerald Figal, met on Flickr, I decided to use Rollei Eetro 80s film as he did, with an infrared filter and then developed in Caffenol-C-L. For this try, I wanted to use a twin lens reflex in order to see exactly what I wanted to photograph. I used a Rolleiflex old standard from the mid thirties because I had a push on infrared filter made by Agfa for Rollei in the thirties to.

I shot with the IR filter during a sunny day, at f/16 and 1 sec exposure (actually near 2s because the shutter is a bit tired). It means that the film was exposed for 3 iso. On the same roll, I exposed the RR80S without filter at 80 iso. The sniper was shot at f/8 and 1/5 sec, camera on a table. I stand developed the film as Gerald did, in Caffenol-C-L, at 20°c for 50 minutes.





Washing soda"Phoenix" (not waterfree!) : 20 g
Vitamine C : 6 g
KBr : 0,6 g
Instant coffee Granarom (Lidl market) : 24 g

Kind regards from Troyes/France.

Yannick"



Note: Yannick uses a hydrated washing soda. He determined the water content and recalculated the needed amount. So it's a standard Caffenol-C-L recipe with 1 g/l pot. bromide. If you want to use iodized salt I suggest starting with 10 g/l (Reinhold)

4 comments:

Petevideos said...

Hy all. this is my first appearance on this blog.
I was given the site to check the new developer,and I must honestly say it's very intriguing. I will try it as soon i get the chemicals.
Just a thought - if the Coffee's property as a developer is the caffein, has someone tried to use it in its pure form as a caffein and mix it with the rest?
Very much appreciate al the time and the research that went to it Reinhold.

imagesfrugales said...

Hi Petko,

it's not the caffeine but the caffeic acid and most probably a whole bunch of similar agents.

mathieu said...

hi,

to me, it looks like I can use NaCl instead of KBr? Or i understood wrong?
Thanks, cheers

imagesfrugales said...

Yes you can, mathieu:
http://caffenol.blogspot.de/search/label/table%20salt