Ah, movie film… It’s great stuff, really, even expired it gives really good, predictable and repeatable results. FPP’s 320 T is some expired Kodak Vision film, helpfully loaded into 35mm cassettes by the good people at the FPP. Visionary film directors used Kodak Vision 320T for such titles as Unbreakable, the Kill Bill series, Being John Malkovich, and The Man Who Wasn’t There, so if you want to see how good this film can look, look up one of those.
If, on the other hand, you want to see what a rank amateur with plastic cameras and ancient chemicals can get out of it, read on…
I shot my first rolls of movie film a couple of years ago, I think, and I had good success getting remjet off with a combination of multiple baking soda baths before development and a good wipe-down with a lint-free rag after, but for whatever reason, I had great difficulty removing remjet with the middle two rolls, and the most recent three.
Thankfully, I’m down to just one roll… I plan to send it off to some professionals.
I shot one roll of FPP 100T (shared last week) two rolls of 320T during and after a trip up to see Mom in late January 2018, and they were the last 3 rolls developed in a batch of chemicals I mixed on 9/30/2017. In all, I developed 33 rolls of film in that set of chemicals between 9/30 and 2/8… So 33 rolls and just over 4 months.
I extended development by 30 seconds at about roll 15, and extended blix by 30 seconds at 20 rolls, and an additional 30 seconds in the late 20s, so these were dev’d for maybe 4:15 and blixed for close to 8 minutes, and I see no issues on the development front. The color is maybe a bit wonky, but that’s likely due to me shooting it outdoors: the “T” stands for “Tungsten.” FPP 320 T (and Kodak Vision 320 T) is balanced for shooting under tungsten bulbs. To get the right color out of it, the FPP recommends shooting through a #85 filter, but I didn’t bother with that this time.
So I shot one roll in the Diana Mini, and another in the FM3a with the 28-105 D.
I loaded up the Mini right after I arrived at Mom’s, and took it on the ill-fated walk around Berryville. I say “ill fated” because I tore the MCL in my right knee during this walk, and it’s only now (more than a month later) feeling almost normal…
I took a few more shots while driving Mom around Eureka one day, and while hobbling around her house.
And then it was time to drive home, and believe me, I took my time: it’s hard to get in and out of a car with a torn MCL, and especially hard to get in and out when you don’t do it very often, so I made plenty of stops on the way back.
But I also shot a bunch from the driver’s seat…
I finished the roll in the Mini about that time, and also finished a roll of Black & White in the FM3a, so I shoved a second roll of 320 T into it, and shot the drive through the Talimena State Park and Ouachita National Forest, the dam at Sardis Lke and the rest of the drive home with that and the 28-105 D.
Yes, I did a horrible job of removing the remjet, so bad, in fact, that some migrated to the emulsion side, and I’ll probably never get that out.
Astaghfirullah, and I’ll probably never try to clean these or do anything with them anyway, though the color is really interesting and the FPP 320 T is really a capable stock.
When I got home, I was shocked to still have 8 or 10 frames left, and it took several days before I figured out what to do… I used the macro function on the 28-105 D to shoot my melted ice pack, with some interesting results…
And my coffee cup.
And I was looking at this and flipping it to the left and to the right, trying to find something, when it hit me:
So the FPP 320 T (expired Kodak Vision 320 T). It was used for some beautifully-shot films, and I didn’t really do it justice at all. Shot at EI 100, it has some smooth, pleasant grain, and really pleasant color, but the remjet makes handling and processing it a huge pain.
| Grain | |
| Character | |
| Handling | |
| Processing |
Overall, I’d give it 3 stars.
Rolls remain available at the FPP store and I expected to find some on the ‘bay, but no joy: 200T, sure; 500T, of course; 320T? not so much. Do to the issues with home development, I’d give it a pass, but if you think you can remove the remjet without any of it migrating to the emulsion side, it’s probably worth a try.
