News

We’ve been asked about the difference between Foma’s films. Now, we do not want to ignite the old “which film is the best film” debate. (Frankly, there is no answer to that question.) We just wanted to do a quick comparison of FOMAPAN 100 Classic, FOMAPAN 200 Creative, RETROPAN 320 soft and FOMAPAN 400 Action.   Let’s start by reviewing the descriptions from the manufacturer:   FOMAPAN 100 Classic is a panchromatically sensitized, black-and-white negative film designed for taking photographs. The film meets high requirements for low granularity, high resolving power and contour sharpness and a wide range of halftones....

Believe it or not, people are still shooting 9 cm x12 cm film.  And they're still asking if they can processes it our film tanks. In fact, they started asking before the first SP-445 even shipped!  While an injection molded 9x12 film holder would be the perfect solution, the market just isn't large enough to justify it. The best answer we've had so far is to modify an original Rev 1 film holder: Processing 9x12. So here's another answer: a 3D printed adapter kit: Now we could have the parts printed for you, but that would be way more hassle...

The factory is machining the molds for the new tank and related components. Just in case you're wondering what's involved, here's an exploded view of the mold for the tank: And no, it's not built from lego blocks, the fancy colors are just for clarity.  Click the photo to download a 3D pdf file (you'll probably have to save it and open it in a viewer that supports 3D pdfs.) If you look closely, you can see the SP-645 tank in the middle (light blue). We estimating another four weeks before we see pre-pre-production samples and another four weeks after...

Our buddy Tim Layton (https://timlayton.teachable.com/) was working on an 8x20 project and asked if we could build him a super-sized version of our SP-8x10 tray.  It sounded simple: just cut the ends off of two SP-8x10 trays and glue them together. Here's the first prototype: It worked great (https://timlaytonfineart.com/additional-uses-for-my-ultra-large-format-daylight-tray-by-stearman-press/) Turns out he wasn't the only ULF photographer who wanted one!  So we had to refine our process if we were going build more. Thus we designed a couple of "splices". These are 3D printed parts that glue the two tray halves (and lid halves) together.  It also allowed us to...

SP-645 The original SP-445 wasn't even in production and people were asking for a higher capacity version! We had requests for systems that could process six, eight, ten and even a few asking for twelve sheets. Anything past eight gets really complicated, really fast. Even an eight sheet version gets a bit bulky and would require a serious redesign of both the tank and the lid. Over the years, the inquires have converged on six or eight sheets. Frankly, six sheets seems like the right number: It's a 50% capacity increase over the current version. Requires only 600 ml of...