Eastman Kodak Double X film is a 1960’s Kodak Motion Picture film that Cinestill has loaded into cartridges and rebranded with their name on the cassette. I had read many great reviews about this film and I love the classic film look of it. If James Bond was shot with this film then I had to try it.
Well, when I first started shooting film again, a nice guy in the community gifted me a box of mostly expired film and it included a few rolls of Double X. I tried a roll right away and sent it out to the lab. When my results came back I was so disappointed. I didn’t know what happened, but the grain was so strong that the photos were basically unusable. This scared me away from trying the other two rolls, to I put them in the fridge and forgot about them.
Fast forward a year and now I develop my own film. I thought maybe since I can now control all aspects of the process, I should try it again. Alex Luyckx recommended I shoot it at ISO 200 and then process it in Kodak D-76 1+2 dilution for 11 minutes. I agitated the first minute and then 10 seconds every minute after that. I was so happy when I pulled that roll out of the developing tank and could see it was exposed perfectly.
I shot the roll with my Leica M2, and just took some photos around my yard for this test roll.
I use Silverfast with my Epson V800 scanner and there is no profile for this film so I looked up examples and decided to use TMax 100’s profile to scan these and made adjustments accordingly.
I also tested it indoors. With ISO 200 you won’t get fast shutter speeds, but I figured with my Leica, I could hold it still enough to take a couple shots.
This film is surprisingly versatile. It has a nice tonal range and the shadows still hold a lot of information. A lot of times in my experiments I find when I try to lift shadow, I’m left with nothing but black grain. Not so with this roll.
Final Thoughts
I don’t know why that first experience with this film was so bad. I probably never will know because I never asked the lab, but I am so glad I have tried it again. I have one more roll I will save for a nice occasion. I would really like to shoot some portraits with it.
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Until next time, stay motivated and keep shooting.
4 thoughts on “Developing Adventures – A Roll of Eastman Kodak Double X 5222”