Olympus Trip - Kodak XX

 I took advantage of the first decent spring sunshine of the year to get out and about with my Olympus Trip loaded with a roll of Kodak Double X at 200 iso. With a clear sky and time to wander, I set about the task of finding compositions as I walked around town. Early spring sunshine gave me a chance to enjoy the shadows and I also wanted to find out how well my Olympus Trip handled a 200 iso film. 

Kodak Double-X is a much loved and respected black and white cinema film that can be developed in standard black and white chemistry as well as the dedicated Kodak D-96 B&W cinema film developer. It has been used in several of Hollywood's greatest films. Schindler's List was filmed entirely with Double-X at Steven Spielberg's insistence. Digital cameras had become widely used alongside Computer Generated Imagery, but Spielberg dug his heels in and refused to make the multi Oscar winning movie with anything other than film. 

Oppenheimer is another blockbuster that used Kodak Double-X during principal photography, but not to the extent of Schindler's List. The story of the first Atomic Bomb and the people who built it during the dark days of WW2 benefitted from a mix of high resolution colour digital imagery mixed with scenes filmed on Double-X. They got the balance right in my humble opinion and I have to admit, a dramatised historical documentary looks good on b&w film. 

I like using Kodak Double-X, it has a lot going for it and is much loved by the film photography community. I was having a think about how I would develop it whilst I was walking around finding compositions. I could have gone for high concentrate dilution and quick development time, but my thoughts were to go long. Not super long, just pick the dilution that speaks to me every time I use this film. It's a dilution and time that I got from Alex Luyckx and he has a lot more experience in developing film than I will ever have. It was in the midst of that thought that I finished my film and switched cameras for my last roll of the day before heading home.

I developed my roll of Kodak Double-X in Bellini Euro HC, 1+63 dilution H, for 10 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. I have had good results with this dilution in the past and I hoped I would do so again with this roll. I digitised it with my Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi 35mm film holder, Pixl-Latr and A5 sized led light pad. I processed the RAW files with Affinity Studio.

On processing the first couple of images, I knew I had shot a good roll of film. The sunshine definitely helped, but also the quality of this little pocket point and shoot shines just as brightly. Double-X is a film that can easily be messed up, but thankfully it has a decent dynamic range that can forgive mistakes. 

As I said in my previous blog about this camera, the selenium meter is definitely still working and it had my roll of Double-X looking good, leaving me little to do but invert the negative and make a few slight adjustments. I am very happy with my results and wont hesitate to reach for another roll of Double-X to load into my Olympus Trip when it comes up in my regular rotation again in the not too distant future.

Here's a few of my favourite photos shot on Kodak Double-X with my Olympus Trip 35. I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr that you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them. 

Kodak Double-X - Olympus Trip 35