Preface:
Film betrayed me recently. Ok. That is an overstatement. Mislabeled film combined with potential user error betrayed me recently. How so? I am glad I imagined that you asked.
What does this mean to you?
To me, an admitted film development novice, this means developing it like color film. But it also says this…
…which should mean to develop it like B&W film. What gives?
While not impossible, looking at you Ilford XP2, it does seem improbable.
I have tried a different color film of theirs before, but Wolfen is a new brand to me. Bought two rolls of ISO 8 DN21 from my local camera shop. Baffled by the seeming box and label instruction contradiction I looked online for confirmation and found no matching listing for this film. This film is named DN21 and is rated at ISO 8.
I found an ISO 13 variant online. Filled with doubt I went ahead and shot a test roll and then developed it like C41 film. And it was the clearest film I have ever seen in my life. Was I bitter? Yes. But only briefly.
Moving on.
Did leave a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth though. Needed a film palette cleanser. You know who always has my back when I need something different?
SIGMA.
They are always there for me with their special brand of goofiness. Pre alliance anyway. I do not recognize this shared mount, post Foveon, and no removable hot mirror SIGMA variant. I am talking proper, “What are their Engineers smoking?, full of questionable but somehow still endearing oddball ergonomics and misshapen aesthetics SIGMA.
I decided to go with the oddest possible Foveon use case made easy. Infrared. Already wrote a long-winded post about my first experiences and a follow-up. Here are some additional samples.
Nothing fancy. Just random shots of scenes seen. But infrared makes almost everything look good to me. And the fact that this solution has made casual Infrared photography accessible is a bit amazing. All for the low $24 cost of an Infrared pass/Visible light cut filter. More details are in the post linked in the previous paragraph. And it was good. On to the photos.
Am I over the film thing fully now?
Yes.
But I think I will mess around with Foveon for a few more days.
I initially went into this Infrared experiment unsure of the outcome. Had feared that it would be a brief trial before moving back to visible light photography, but I really like the different look. Likely also helps that I really like black and white photography and this is a very interesting option. I find the whites of the foliage, the darks of plastic and asphalt, and the glow of many other objects to be fascinating. The fact that SIGMA makes it easy to switch back and forth between the two is much appreciated. I already really like the camera, and this is yet another feather in the SIGMA sd Quattro’s cap.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 