The Fantôme Kino B&W ISO 8 Film in the Livingroom of Alfred Gerke

Alfred Gerke is a long-time Lomographer and black and white expert. He tested our new Fantôme Kino B&W ISO 8 film in his Nikon F5 with an AF Nikkor 50 mm lens for us. He developed the film with D96 Monobath from Cinestill. Here are his thoughts about the new film:

Can you tell us a little bit about the creation process of this series?

Due to the bad weather conditions, I was not able to create test images outside, so I converted my living room into a "photo studio" and took self-portraits and still lifes. Since I took the photos on my own, I tried to determine the focus by using a dummy, which was not quite successful, probably also because the open aperture and the short distance from the lens to the subject resulted in a shallow depth of field. I also experimented with two light sources.

What were your experiences with the Fantôme Kino B&W ISO 8 film?

The film is special. If you can control light and time it's fun to work with and well-exposed pictures look great. I think the strengths of this film are its sharpness of detail, but it loses some of the film look that classic film emulsions offer. At low ISO you either have a lot of light or a lot of time. There is not much light in winter, so I took the pictures with a lot of time and a tripod. If the weather is fine, it works everywhere.
Each picture was taken twice, once with ISO 8 and once with ISO 8 + 1/3 EV. For the development, I used D96 Monobath from Cinestill and developed 8 min with constant movement and 24 degrees. Actually, 4 min should have been enough, the additional 4 min are purely anxiety surcharge. I pulled the film by 1/2 stop to get the contrast in the film under control. The 1/3 EV extra should help to bring out the details in the shadows more.

Tips and tricks for those who want to try the Fantôme Kino B&W ISO 8? What would you recommend the film for?

Above all, you should be able to control the light. Artificial light in the studio, or a lot of sun in the summer and a tripod will always help to achieve good results. The film has a very high resolution, so well and carefully exposed, you will be able to produce great enlargements even with a 35mm negative. Because of its sharpness of detail, I could imagine the film also very well in macro photography.
Since the film is cast on a clear carrier, it could certainly be used as b/w slide film in the reversal process.

Many thanks to Alfred for his wonderful work! Visit his LomoHome or his Tumblr to never miss any of his great works.

written by alinaxeniatroniarsky on 2020-03-26 #gear #people #black-and-white #portraits #iso8 #fantome8 #fantome-kino