Developed my first 8x10 - Zebra film

[Paul Ewins]

Due to a protracted renovation of my house I have been without a dark room for nearly 18 months. It was finally finished a couple of weeks back and I have been trying to catch up with a heap of photo projects while still trying to finish other details of the renovations.

While I was waiting for the darkroom I had little else to do but browse LFphoto and eBay which somewhat inevitably meant that I bought an 8x10 camera. In fact I bought 3 of them and a bunch of lenses that I don't need for 4x5. Last night I finally got to try out some of my new gear for the first time and tonight I developed the results.

As there were so many things that were new to me I figured the results would probably be crap, if not a complete disaster so I decided to add yet another unknown and try some chinese "Zebra" film that I bought from a guy in Hong Kong. I loaded it up into a couple of Jobo 3005 drums (10 shots in all) and then sat down to work out what times to use. The box said to develop in D76 1:2 for 10 minutes (at 20C/68F). I normally use ID11 1:1 as this gives me the right volume for one shot processing in the expert drums. I took a guess and chose 8 minutes as a starting point figuring that I could change for the second drum if it was badly off.

When the film came out of the drum it was obvious that 8 minutes was about right so I developed the second drum at the same time although the temp had drifted up to around 20.4C. One sheet had a couple of nicks in the emulsion but the rest looked OK. I won't know till tomorrow whether there were any scratches.

I have only ever seen Zebra film sold by the one guy in Hong Kong, and he only seems to get it occasionally. It's certainly well packed, triple boxed then a foil packet and a thick plastic bag and there are paper interleave sheets so that no sheet of film touches another. There is just the one round notch to identify the emulsion side. The base is clear (and the dev came out clear) so I guess there isn't an anti-halation layer.

[jetcode]

bergger is wrapped the same and I've been told this is the forte or foma style so it sounds like zebra is a marketing label for the same film

[scott_6029]

Bergger/Forte are no longer made? Is it NOS or Foma? Let us know how it prints. Thanks. Scott

[Ted Harris]

If it is coming out of Hong Kong it is more likely to be repackaged Lucky or ERA film from China. Both make sheet film and ERA seems to make a fairly wide variety although there is little good information outside of China.

[Gene McCluney]

Foma film is minimally packed. No inner box, no interleaving paper. film is in unsealed but taped plastic bag inside box.

[jetcode]

Bergger is readily available

[tim atherton]

Bergger is readily available

I think Bergger must be still using old stockpiled film?

Their new Harman/Ilford based paper is supposed to be in the supply chain in January - I'm not sure about film?

[Robert Hall]

I had heard while in Hong Kong last, that it was from the same plant that Maco used.