Ilford SFX

DaireQuinlan

A few people were asking about this a while back I think, its an easy way of shooting IR. No precautions neccessary when loading/unloading, and the Cokin SFX filter is sort of seeable through if you shade the eyepiece and wait for a few seconds. The drawback is that it's not REALLY IR, it just barely gets into IR territory, but you do get that classic foliage effect, and without the filter its a normal pan film with slightly increased red sensitivity so its not a bad everyday film either. Also you don't get that halo effect of the classic IR films as it has the normal anti-halation backing to prevent this. In addition it's grainnnnny for 200asa film.

Here's a classic shot with the Cokin filter in place. This was handheld at about 1/30 or so at f/5.6.



Here's a normal shot with just a light yellow filter:


And a completely unfiltered shot:


This is from a few taken up on killiney hill on saturday evening, with just a normal red 25a filter. Even that small bit of filtering brings out the IR in the film a bit (look at the skin tones and clothes)


There were a fair few photographers lurking around the place (killiney hill)at the time actually, anyone from here ?

I screwed up development on these, it was DD-X, meant to be 1+4, ended up at 1+3 or so instead, so they're overdeveloped and probably a little grainier than they should be.

Schlemm

Beautiful shots, I love the first one especially. Can you get that 'classic foliage effect' shooting without a filter on that film?

sineadw

I've kind of resigned myself to getting some of this as I can't find real IR film for love nor money... sigh.. but these are lovely

i_am_dogboy

I found some rollei IR 400 film in a real world shop earlier this year somewhere, I'll have to think where...

I've personally found SFX to have pretty good results(except that one time I forgot to disable ICE when I scanned and assumed I'd done something wrong during development), the rollei stuff is one of those films that makes me swear when I'm loading it onto the reel too, it always ****ing takes forever.

DaireQuinlan

Schlemm wrote: »

Beautiful shots, I love the first one especially. Can you get that 'classic foliage effect' shooting without a filter on that film?

Nope, without a filter it's pretty much a normal panchromatic B&W with just a touch of IR. Even with the red 25a you won't get white foliage, it'll be lighter though than you'd get ordinarily.

i_am_dogboy wrote: »

I've personally found SFX to have pretty good results(except that one time I forgot to disable ICE when I scanned and assumed I'd done something wrong during development), the rollei stuff is one of those films that makes me swear when I'm loading it onto the reel too, it always ****ing takes forever.

sineadw wrote: »

I've kind of resigned myself to getting some of this as I can't find real IR film for love nor money... sigh.. but these are lovely

I was just looking at macodirect.de , they have efke Aura in stock, its normal efke IR film with the anti-halation backing removed. Sensitive to 820 (as opposed to SFX's 720). I'm tempted except for macodirect's rather extortionate postal charges. Same thin polyester base by the looks of things as those rollei/agfa films though so i_am_dogboy would be equally as annoyed :-)

thefizz

I get the Efke and Rollei IR films from macodirect and don't find their postage charges too expensive. But then I usually get 20 rolls per order so it works out ok.

If you like SFX's extended red sensitivity but dislike its grain, then try Rollei Superpan 200.

Peter

trishw78

I have some very grainy SFX shots at home. I must look at them tonight.

I do like it's grainy nature. But then I do like that textured look to shots

DaireQuinlan

thefizz wrote: »

I get the Efke and Rollei IR films from macodirect and don't find their postage charges too expensive. But then I usually get 20 rolls per order so it works out ok.

If you like SFX's extended red sensitivity but dislike its grain, then try Rollei Superpan 200.

Peter

How can you not find them expensive ? Even at 20 rolls that's an extra euro per roll. I always get quoted €18.50 postage at least. That rollei film -does- look interesting all right. I have a bunch of stuff I want to get at the moment, including a quart of Diafine so I might just have to bite the bullet and just order it. Silverprint (who are the only other eu suppliers I've seen with Diafine) won't ship chemicals to ROI.

thefizz

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

How can you not find them expensive ? Even at 20 rolls that's an extra euro per roll. I always get quoted €18.50 postage at least. That rollei film -does- look interesting all right. I have a bunch of stuff I want to get at the moment, including a quart of Diafine so I might just have to bite the bullet and just order it. Silverprint (who are the only other eu suppliers I've seen with Diafine) won't ship chemicals to ROI.

But silverprint's carriage is even more. I just checked my last order for 20 films from macodirect and the carriage was €10. Just email them and ask them can they do better, thats what I did.

If you can buy lots of stuff then the carriage charges work out ok from both companies.

DaireQuinlan

thefizz wrote: »

But silverprint's carriage is even more. I just checked my last order for 20 films from macodirect and the carriage was €10. Just email them and ask them can they do better, thats what I did.

If you can buy lots of stuff then the carriage charges work out ok from both companies.

I'll give that a go, never even occurred to me to ask Almost €20 is what I've always been quoted for P&P anytime I've looked into getting stuff from them.

D.