An almost full, 100 foot roll of Svema BW Super Positive! was given to me a couple of months ago. My friend had tried a few rolls of the film and just decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Since I also load my own canisters of 35mm, he gave it to me to try.
I knew that the film is a direct positive film and that it should be developed in regular B&W chemicals, but that was about it. So, I asked the Google. Very little information turned up. I learned that it is also called Svema Micrat-Orto, looked at a dozen or so images and a few developing formulas, but no in-depth reviews or testing of the film.
So I decided to just wing it.
I waited for a bright clear day since I would need plenty of light. I put a roll in my Nikon FM since the camera’s meter can go as low as 12 ASA and from there I could open up 4 or 5 stops. Oh, I forgot to mention that the film is rated at 0.8 ISO.
These are true test shots, down and dirty. The lens was wide open and the shutter speed was pretty low, around 1/15 of a second. I wasn’t worried about focus as much as exposure. I purposely chose contrasty scenes to see how well the film held up in both shadow and highlight detail. I took approximately two whole minutes to expose the roll in my backyard.
Development was in Kodak HC-110 (1+49) for 7:15 @ 68°. I looked at some development times on the web and at what the Massive Dev chart had for Micrat-Orto and then just took a guess with my favorite dilution.
Here are a few of the images.
This is not any sort of detailed review, yet. As I mess around some more with the film I will write more about it. I will hopefully be able to get some better results.
