I ordered this film from the Kickstarter project and later some extra through the Kosmo Foto website. I had read that it could be pushed to 6400 and wanted to try that. If it worked it would be amazing. As I was planning to visit the Science and Industrial Museum in Manchester to see the Amazonia exhibit, I thought this would be a perfect test. Industrial museums are often dark, reflecting the conditions of days past. I was right, I mainly kept my camera on 1/125th and f2. Of course, I had to set the camera manually as I didn’t have one that could automatically meter for 6400asa. I have a few that go to 3200asa, but nothing further.

So what camera did I choose? I decided to add to the experiment and kill two birds with one stone. I wanted a camera I knew worked and one that could shoot at a reasonably high speed. So I chose the Olympus OM101 as I had the manual adapter and it could fire at 1/2000th. This would be important if I also shot photos outside at 6400, I would need a fast speed. I also chose this camera as I had recently cleaned the 50mm lens. I don’t often take lenses apart as I am not great at putting them back together. This camera is cheap to find on eBay and often the lenses are listed as having fungus, mine had signs of it too. I found the lens very easy to take apart and clean, in fact, it was the easiest lens I have ever cleaned, you could do it blindfolded. The glass cleaned up perfectly.

Once I had finished the roll I then had the issue of developing it. The development sheet didn’t give any information about the developers I had at that speed. I had Rodinal, R09, and pyro so I decided to go for Rodinal at 1:25 and estimate times based on what was on the sheet for 1600. I used a bit of math which I won’t go into and the Film Developer Pro app. The app didn’t have any times for Agent Shadow as it is too new. So I chose a film of similar speed, Fuji Acros and inputted the details given on the sheet for Rodinal at 1:25 and 1600asa. Then I adjusted the time directly to match the time given on the sheet. Once that was set I altered the speed to 6400asa for the final development time and it came to near the time I had estimated. So I went with it, this is a screenshot of the details below.

I have to say I was a bit generous with the measuring of chemicals and temperature and seeing the results I think 45-50 minutes would have been better.

Not all of the photos came out, some were still too dark, but the vast majority did and I was so happy with the results. The ones that didn’t come out were down to my error, forgetting to reset the manual adapter.

Here are the results I did get.

The results seem to be better from inside the museum rather than outside in the brighter light. I was expecting huge grain after pushing the film by that much but there really isn’t a lot of it. I am so impressed by the results. I think I will keep a roll of this in my bag at all times for occasions when I need that extra help with darkness. To top it off, the film isn’t really that expensive, it is one of the cheaper films out there. Bloody brilliant.

The camera worked well and the cleaned-up lens performed excellently. So a happy day all around.