Thursday, August 2, 2007

Milky way project -- Film Choice

After camera selection for the Milky way project the next more important thing will be film choice.
The "perfect" astro film would combine a few characteristics:
  1. No reciprocity failure
  2. Fine grain
  3. sensitive to H-Alpha at 656.4 nm
  4. Sold in 4x5 format
  5. Fast
  6. E-6 positive development
  7. Handles push processing
However there is as far as I know no such film. Fuji's provia 400F is gets 1,3 and 5, and not bad on #2, but is not sold as sheet film, so that kills that idea. So what is left

  • Provia 100F
  • Astia 100F
  • Velvia 100
  • Velvia 100F
  • A Kodak film
It looks like Velvia 100 might do a bit better on the red, Astia has a bit finner grain, and I think Provia will push better. I think they will all be fine on the other points. Kodak's datasheets are not as easy to understand as Fuji's, so I will stick to Fuji.

I may have to buy a few rolls/boxes and take them out to test and see what does best.

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