Developing Adventures – My First Roll of Arista EDU Ultra 200 Film

In my developing adventures, I have been trying to find an affordable black and white film stock to push for indoor use. I’ve recently found Arista EDU Ultra film. It is a very affordable stock with the 200 ISO roll being only $4.99 and the 400 ISO roll $4.89. In this article, I will be showing the results I got developing Arista EDU 200 film.

Arista EDU film was created by Freestyle Photographic Supplies in California as an affordable film for students and teachers. While researching, I read that it is repackaged Fomapan 200. I find it interesting that Fomapan does not take kindly to pushing, but this film does. Maybe someone can explain that to me in the comments. (Articles pushing both films coming soon. Be sure to subscribe to be notified.)

Developing the Film

I didn’t push this roll. First I wanted to see what it looked like at box speed and I plan on pushing the 400 speed Arista EDU film. This roll was shot in my Yashica Electro 35 GSN, and I processed the roll in Kodak D-76 for 6 minutes, agitating for the first 30 seconds and then for 5 seconds every 30 seconds after that.

Next, I scanned using my Epson V800 and the Silverfast software, but it doesn’t have a profile for this film. Therefore, I scanned it as Ilford HP5 and made adjustments from there.

My Results

The grain is a little bit more pronounced than I’m used to with a 200 speed film, but I do like the tonal range of this film. It allowed me a lot of leeway to add contrast where I wanted.

There is some debate on whether the native speed of this film is actually ISO 100, but I don’t like to touch those arguments. I am not educated enough in those subjects to talk about it. For the sake of my own experimenting, I will only comment on my own experience and results.

Final Thoughts

I like this film. I look forward to pushing the 400 speed rolls I have. This will also serve as a great affordable stock to use for testing cameras that my uncle sends me. Stay tuned for more tests to come.

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Until next time, stay motivated and keep shooting.