Kodak Kodalith 2556 in Kodak Microdol-X

iangreenhalgh1 · Expire: 2014-01-07

I picked up a 30m roll of Kodalith very cheap, I have developed a penchant for slow films with high contrast and sharpness and tiny grain after managing to tame the contrast and eek nice tonality from Tech Pan and Copex, so I figured the Kodalith would be worth a try. It's around ISO 6, orthchromatic and extremely high contrast - it was intended for reproducing black and white test and line art so I was unsure what kind of grayscale, if any, I would be able to get.

Due to a metering issue, this roll was very overexposed, so tonality was negatively affected, but the sharpness and grain are very good and I think with proper exposure in overcast, dull light, and careful selection of subject matter, this could be interesting film to play with.

I used my Computar 2.8/28, a lens with no info available, I think made by Kowa, it's a surprisingly great little lens, very sharp and contrasty.

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100% crop from extreme left edge of frame, I think this is very good performance for an unknown Japanese lens that cost me about the same as a pint of beer, f8.

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100% crop from the centre, again at f8, it looks to be less sharp than Tech Pan or Copex, but it's hard to tell due to the limitations of my scanner, I'll call it 'ample sharpness'.

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std · Joined: 09 Feb 2010 Posts: 1827 Location: Bulgaria

It looks very vintage Smile

I kind of like it a lot.

iangreenhalgh1 · Expire: 2014-01-07

Cheers Stefan. The vintage look is probably largely due to the ortho, before ww2, most films were ortho.

This is a classic example of ortho tonality, the greatcoat is blue, so it appears lighter, the collar patches are red so appear darker:

In reality, this is how the uniform he is wearing would look:

You can see it here too, although not as good an example, the greatcoat appears lighter than the trousers and the hats, but in reality, the greatcoats were blue and the trousers and hats bright red:

Ortho film is sensitive to blue so blues appear lighter and reds darker. You can see the effect on this shot of mine where the red brick wall on the left appears darker and the blue rectangular panel mounted on it appears lighter because it is blue:

The microfilm purchase didn't happen, sadly, and I then tried to buy a large lot of Kodak microfilm from the US which was ortho too, but the shipping make it impractical.

I'll keep searching and when I find some more, I'll be sure to share.