Ferrania P30

 A sunny afternoon at the beginning of December 2023 gave me a chance to head out with Ferrania P30, a slow speed black and white film that entered the market a few years ago with the re-birth of the Italian film manufacturer, Ferrania. It is a high contrast black and white film available in 35mm and 120 medium format and is an emulsion based up the original Ferrania P30 from the mid 20th century. 

I took advantage of the bright light on this fine afternoon and shot my roll of Ferrania P30 with my Soviet era FED 2 rangefinder camera and Jupiter 8 50mm f/2 lens. I was aided by my trusty Gossen Trisix selenium light meter. My FED 2 is a manual camera and I'm lucky it has a coupled rangefinder that shows me in the viewfinder when I have my lens focused on my subject. It's all you need.

I also chose to meter at 50 iso as I wanted to slightly over expose my film. P30 has a high silver content and I wanted to use as much of it as I could. I shot a roll or two in 2023 and liked the richness of the blacks when I shot and developed the film at box speed. I wanted to see if a little over exposure could bring more of the black into play and create a darker mood to my photos.

I wasn't taking any fancy shots, just documenting the ongoing demolition of The Galleries and admiring the buildings in Wigan town centre. I visited The Face of Wigan, the statue of Billy Boston, the Civic Centre and the Mining Monument between the Town Hall and Swimming Baths. I also had a wander around the Parish Church and was led by the smell of boiled sweets being made to W.M. Santus Toffee Works, the home of Uncle Joe's Mint Balls.  

I was having a lot of fun on my wander around town in the sunshine. It was a tad chilly, but I didn't mind. It had been a few days since my last walk courtesy of the weather being dark, wet, cold, dull and gloomy. The shadows were lengthened with the sun being low on this late autumn afternoon, which makes life a little challenging, but I was in the zone and soon finished my roll of Ferrania P30 and headed home.

I developed my film a few days later using Zone Imaging 510 Pyro diluted at 1+100 for 13 1/2 minutes at 20 celcius. I stopped it with filtered water, fixed with Fotospeed FX30 fixer and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. Once dry I digitised it with my Nikon D700 and Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi 35mm film holder, Pixl-Latr and led light source. RAW files were processed using Affinity Photo 2.

Once I began my editing my photos I could see they had some detail in the shadows that I teased out with some deft dodging and burning. Ferrania P30 has bucket loads of contrast but also has subtle variations in tones that sometimes pop right out, but on a day like the one I shot my roll, it was a little challenging at times to accentuate them.

One thing is for sure, I got the darker mood I was searching for by shooting it a 50 iso and developing it at box speed. Having a Veikk A15 Pen Tablet helped a lot as I gently brought my photos to life. I have more control over gentle brush strokes with a pen tablet than I do with my mouse. I didn't have to do much, just bring the richness into the blacks and brighten the highlights and mid tones to really get what I was searching for from this roll of Ferrania P30. It had an added bonus of having an orthochromatic feel to it as some red items rendered a very deep black.

This photo walk reminded me of why I bought my FED2 and Jupiter 8 lens. It's an unashamed Leica clone with a reassuringly industrial feel to it. It was built by FED in Kharkiv, Ukraine with the aim of improving the Leica Copy that had been made in the former Soviet Union before WW2. I suspect there was a lot of Leica original plans used too as the Soviets took a huge chunk of the German camera industry as reparations after WW2.

If you want a Leica like experience, but don't want to spend a small fortune on one, A FED 2 is a great choice of camera, with a caveat. Make sure you buy one that has recently been serviced if you can. All Soviet built cameras have their quirks, the FED 2 has a shutter curtain that can be prone to pinholes when left in the dark recesses of grandpa's attic and shutter speeds can become sluggish as the lubricants harden with age. 

Mine was an ebay bargain and has been serviced at some point in it's life, as evidenced by the repairs to pinholes in the shutter curtains and it's decent shutter speeds, but you may not be so lucky. I will add links to three online retailers based in the EU who sell fully functional Soviet cameras for a reasonable amount of cash and with a warranty too.

Here's a few of my favourite photos from my wander around Wigan with a roll of Ferrania P30 in my FED 2. I am happy with this experiment. I was looking for deep shadows and rich blacks to accentuate a dark, moody feeling I get at this time of year. I can understand now why Italian film directors, post WW2, loved P30. It's a film that loves a lot of light, but when there wasn't as much as I would like, it said "Hold My Beer!" and gave me these. Bellissimo! As always I have posted them and more in an album on my Flickr account you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Ferrania P30 - FED 2 - Jupiter 8 50mm f/2
Ural Seller 
Fedka 
OK Vintage Camera