Last week we had a nice cool front come through here in Florida, and since I wait all year long for this weather, I just had to get outside. I went to Tradition, Florida, a small town nearby, to walk around and take some landscape pictures with the new Ilford Ortho Plus 80 film.
If you’ve been following my blog you know that I have been dealing with a lot of pain in my legs from a Crohn’s disease flare up and long hospital stay back in June. This cold front was a good opportunity to go out and walk, and try to strengthen them.
About the Film
First off, the definition of Orthochromatic: sensitive to all visible light except red. Orthochromatic film can therefore be handled in red light in the darkroom but does not produce black-and-white tones that correspond very closely to the colors seen by the eye.
The Ilford Ortho Plus 80 film was recently released in the 120 and 35mm format. Previously it was only available in 4×5 sheet film. It was designed as a copy film, but works great for landscapes because it is Orthochromatic. It’s my understanding that this means it is more sensitive to greens and blues than traditional panchromatic films, and therefore it will expose those colors lighter. This also means it is not sensitive to reds, so they will render darker, especially if you use a red filter, you’ll end up with blank pictures. For more technical info on the film visit Ilford’s website here.
A Day in Tradition
35mm film in the Nikon F
Note how dark the greens rendered
When preparing for this day I decided to use the 80mm lens on my Mamiya 645 Pro because I thought it would be a good focal length for landscapes, and I chose the 43-86mm Nikkor for my Nikon F with the Photomic FTn meter because I wanted to bring a zoom lens so I’d have the option to take wide landscapes and closer pics if I encountered any birds. I normally use my 35-200mm Nikkor, but it’s just too heavy and I already knew this was going to be very hard on my legs as it was.
After choosing my lenses, I loaded up the 120 film in my (new to me) Mamiya 645 Pro, and 35mm film in my Nikon F and set out for Tradition.
The day was beautiful. The sky was very blue, and the sun was out in full force, so I knew my pictures were going to come out pretty contrasty. I was especially excited to test the film by taking pictures of the red brick bridges in town, fully expecting them to come out black. Instead, the red brick rendered nicely and the green foliage came out very dark. I am not sure why that is. I suspect it had something to do with the direction of the orange sunlight.
In one direction the bridge came out perfect.
Then from the other direction the bridge rendered very dark. I suspect it had to do with the sunlight, but I could be wrong. This was my first time using an orthochromatic film so I am not very experienced.
First, I walked around the town square where they had the Christmas decorations set up. It was a very busy day, and the traffic around the square was heavy, so I didn’t stick around there long.
Next, I drove closer to the residential area where it was quiet and there were lakes. I figured that would be perfect for this film.
120 in the Mamiya 645 Pro
At this point, my legs were starting to hurt pretty bad, so I decided to head back to the town to finish up my rolls with the bridges I passed on the way in.
My Thoughts on the Film
Overall, I am very happy with how these pictures came out. I really love the contrast. The grain is so fine it’s almost non existent. The sharpness is great in my opinion. I’m really happy with this film. I find it to be in the middle of the lighter grays of Ilford XP2 or Ilford Delta 400 and the harsher blacks of Kodak Tmax.
For more on my day in Tradition, check out the video on my YouTube channel to compare how the film rendered the real life tones of these pictures.
Great photos! The tones in medium-format always look so smooth, but the Nikon, at least in these relatively small jpegs, can give it a run for its money! The bridges weren’t black because objects which look red to our eyes also reflect a lot of other colours, especially if they’re illuminated by sunlight. You can test this on Photoshop or a similar program which has an eye-dropper tool. Open a photo which has something red in it, click on the red thing and look at the RGB values. The R will be highest but generally the G and B values will be fairly high too.
Oh I never thought of that. Thanks for pointing that out.
That said, they do of course reflect more red than other colours, which is why they look red to the eye. If you took the same photo with panchromatic film, they would probably appear lighter in tone. Might be an interesting experiment to try someday 😉
I think I will try that. Ortho vs pancro