Analog Therapy/Film Test Redemption: Wolfen DN21 ISO 8

Recently wrote a post about using photography to cope, get out of the house, and get out of the car. This recently backfired a bit.

Film betrayed me.

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.

Just to make sure I did not miss something I reached out to Chris, the manager of my local camera shop, and he confirmed that the box was labeled in error and let him know I would try developing the next roll with Cinestill df96.

Wow—good discovery! We haven’t come across that before. That’s a pretty big error! It is definitely black and white film. I’ll make a note of it and tell everyone here to pass that along to customers. Let me know how it looks in the DF96!

Thanks for the email,

Chris

While this stinks it was good to have it confirmed.

Moving on.

Lost a few mages of my kids last time so for this second roll I made a quick run through my old testing grounds, aka Duke Gardens.

I went to a favorite pairing of lens and camera.

Developed that same evening with Cinestill df96. Here are the surviving exposures with my thoughts afterward.

Instruction mislabeling aside I like this film. It has a unique look. I will not likely try it again. This has nothing to do with the look, but everything to do with the low ISO. Very predictable, but even with an f/1.1 lens more light was required for many pics. There are other higher-speed films that rival the detail available here. One that comes to mind also costs less and can be developed at home with df96 if shot at ISO 100 is CatLABS X Film 320, instead of the labeled ISO 200.

Another great film that is also affordable and plays well with df96 is Foma Fomapan Retro 200.

So for me the remaining up shot is that the limitations of using such a low ISO, similar to FPP ISO 1 and ISO 1.6 color fims, can be a lot of fun. So there may be another roll of Wolfen DN21 ISO 8 in the future.

Happy capturing.

-ELW