Rollei Retro 80S Black and White Film Review | All About Film

I like Retro 80S a lot. It’s a top-five black and white film for me. Portraits, landscapes, fine-art work, scientific imagery, and especially scientific landscape work are great uses for 80S. Sports, architecture, astrophotography, and flash photography are some of the types of work for which a different film would be a better option.

80S is a persnickety film that does not get along well with some common developers. It likes a fast development time and chemistry that tends to deliver flatter results. And it likes its chemistry like I like my tuna sandwiches – fresh. An old tuna salad sandwich, like the one I, back in 1993, left in my high school’s 30-year time capsule, is similar to old film developer and is always a bad idea; this film makes old developer an even worse idea.

If you set out to use Retro 80S, understand that it’s got a learning curve. If you haven’t used a high-contrast film before, you will mess up a good number of rolls. So if you haven’t used it, get at least five rolls and don’t shoot the second until you see what you did wrong on the first. Don’t shoot the third until you see what went wrong on the second, and so forth. This is not a film that anyone can pick up, shoot away on, and expect good results all the time. Retro 80S delivers amazing results, but it makes you earn them first.

Join this channel to get access to perks:
   / @davidhancock  

David Hancock's Amazon Author Page with Links to Select Camera Manual eBooks:
https://www.amazon.com/David-Hancock/...

Subject Index:
0:00 - Intro
0:32 - Film Type
1:12 - Rated Film Speed
2:01 -Available Formats
2:20 - Subjective Film Characteristics
6:29 - Spectral Sensitivity (and how to read it)
11:46 - Characteristic Curve
14:36 - Reciprocity Failure
15:12 - Development Latitude
16:43 - Recommended Camera Settings
18:17 - Recommended Developers
23:19 - Developers to Avoid
24:07 - Shooting Infrared Images with Rollei Retro 80S
26:55 - Closing Thoughts

Developer Sample Index:
D-76 Stock (40 ISO): 0:39
Unknown, probably D-76 Stock (80 ISO): 1:00
D-76 1+1 (80 ISO): 1:30
Ilfosol 3 1+9 (80 ISO): 7:15
Microdol-X 1+3 (40 ISO): 10:54
Rodinal 1+25 (40 ISO): 11:53
Rodinal 1+25 (80 ISO): 13:06
Rodinal 1+50 (40 ISO): 16:49
Rodinal 1+50 (80 ISO): 17:12
Rodinal 1+50 (160 ISO): 17:31
Rodinal 1+100 (Stand, 80 ISO): 17:55
RPX-D 1+19 (80 ISO): 18:24
RPX-D 1+19 (40 ISO): 23:26
Ultrafin Plus 1+4 (80 ISO): 27:02

Stats:
This video contains images from about 50 rolls of film. Image capture occurred from 10 April 2014 to 8 July 2017. This video contains 210 sample photos developed with 14 developer-ISO combinations. Samples were taken with 23 different cameras.

References:
http://www.freestylephoto.biz/pdf/pro...
http://www.fotofachversand.at/pdf/Rol...
http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart....
http://www.maco-photo.de/files/images...
http://www.apug.org/forums/forum.php
http://istillshootfilm.org/
http://www.filmsnotdead.com/
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communiti...
http://www.sprawls.org/ppmi2/FILMCON
http://motion.kodak.com/motion/upload...
http://motion.kodak.com/motion/upload...
http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/d...
http://home.comcast.net/~amitphotogra...
http://www.nfsa.gov.au/preservation/h...