A like-minded friend sent me some film.

This is one of the nice things about having internet friends who are also into film photography. We swap things. I send them something; they send me something. In this case, I ended up trying a film I probably wouldn’t have bought myself.

This time it was Eastman 5360, which is a black-and-white direct positive film. He rated it at 1 ASA. Yep, One. It must be the slowest film I have ever used.

The film is actually a lot more orange than it looks in the photo above. The direct positive bit means that when it is developed, you don’t get a negative; you get slide film…hence the positive.

The person who sent it to me had already used it and also sent me development instructions. He’d worked out that an hour of developing in Rodinal at 1+9, with agitation at 10 minutes, worked, so there didn’t seem much point in me doing another test; I decided to trust him. This is much stronger than the Rodinal dilutions I normally use with stand development, but those were the instructions.

What could go wrong? Well, the first problem was obviously getting the correct exposure. Most cameras and meters don’t go down to 1 ASA. You might get a 3asa choice, but rarely ONE. That left me the option of maths in the field or bracketing the exposures. I chose the latter.

I wanted to use a small aperture, as I knew I would be taking landscapes. That meant at least f/11 or f/16, and combine that with 1 ASA would mean 6,12 and 24-second exposures. Luckily, I did have enough rolls to bracket for the three times.

I used my first roll on a very wet and cloudy camping trip to the Isle of Skye. I took a mini tripod and a cable release, the latter broken after a few shots, so I left the rest of the roll for a wander around Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Then it was time for the developing: the instructions were spot on, and I had a set of photos.

Here are some of the results. I found that 6 seconds was far too short; somewhere between 12 and 24 was the porridge time.

I can’t say they are my favourite shots, but the film worked! Of course there aren’t many as I bracketed 3 shots for each.

I loaded another film in the same camera and took it along to Blackpool when I visited some friends. This time I remembered to take a proper tripod and a better cable release. I even remembered to take a neutral grad filter to help with the sky. I wanted to get shots of the water all smoothed out by a slow exposure; I hadn’t tried it before.

I know there are a few similar shots, but I really wanted to capture the ghost seagulls. I still bracketed a few shots, but then noticed that my light meter app went all the way to 1 ASA; hence there are more shots for this roll.

I love the results from this set. I think I have at least 2 more films, so I will try something like this again, maybe at a lake somewhere. The graduated filter was definitely a game changer so that will be in the bag too. Honestly, I enjoyed this whole experience. Film photography already makes you slow down compared with digital photography, but 1 ASA makes you REALLY slow down.

Moral of the story: If a stranger offers you some experimental film, say yes; if you see or have some slow film, shoot it!

AND finally, we have all seen the rise of AI-generated posts, and I wondered if this post could be written for me and save a little time. It failed miserably. My blog is experience-focused. I write about the things I have tried and the journey to success or failure. ChatGPT could not recreate that for me. It gave me text based on my diary entries, but it had so many mistakes that it would have been quicker to just write it myself, which I mostly did. Some days, I am so tired or busy that I wish there was an easier route for me, but there isn’t, so this blog is and shall remain written by myself.