Type 517 Cine Film - Unfinished Business

 I thoroughly enjoyed using Type 517 film for the 2025 edition of the Frugal Film Project in my Kodak Retina Ia, but I feel I still have unfinished business with it and have to scratch that itch. I learned that Type 517, the Cinema Film version of Ilford FP4 that expired whilst sat for years in refrigerated storage, is a very robust film that responds well to a yellow filter. The filter brought out shadow detail and gave my photos a little more contrast, making the blacks a little deeper and taming the highlights a tad. I didn't have an orange or red filter for my Kodak Retina Ia, I could find them, but the extra cost was going to send me over budget for the Frugal Film Project.

Now I am free from the constraint of budgetary limits and camera choice, I can use the few rolls I have left to see how it responds to orange and red filters. Heck, I may even throw in a green filter just for fun, and you know I love to have fun with my photography. I loaded a roll of Type 517 into my OM-2 with Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens, set the iso to 100, fitted an orange filter and went for a wander in Mesnes Park.

Sunny days were getting closer together as we headed into spring, but on this day there was a brisk cold wind from the north that dropped the temperature a few degrees, and thus, fake spring was upon us. Did I care? Not really. I was out and about in the sunshine and that's all that mattered on the day.

With plenty of light to play with I began documenting a few changes in the park. The Council have begun felling trees that have been affected by disease and become at risk of branches, or worse the whole tree, falling down. Should one hit a passer by, well, you can imagine the compensation claim will be very expensive for everyone but the lawyers. Once the deed is done and the affected trees are cleared, the council assure us that new trees will be planted around the park in the not too distant future.

Having an orange filter on my lens gave me hope I would pick up some texture and deepen the blue holes between the cumulus clouds that were scudding across the skies above the park. As well as documenting the trees I also photographed a few favourite items and tried different angles and fields of view. 

By the time I reached the clock tower at the Thomas Linacre Centre, I was half way through my film and swapped my lens and filter. I had been using my Zuiko 28m f/3.5 on my OM-1n and just swapped the whole shebang from one camera to the other. This was purely to see if made any difference to my shutter speeds as I was using aperture priority on my OM-2, my favourite setting with this camera. 

I soon worked my way through my remaining shots on my roll of Type 517 in my OM-2. Changing to the 28mm f/3.5 and a yellow filter gave me hope that I would get some variety in my photos. The construction work on the new development, Fettler's, is gathering pace and it's good to see the progress being made. I finished my last few frames in Wigan Town Center and came home happy with my effort on the day. I definitely needed a cuppa and a warm up from being exposed to that biting wind.

I developed my roll of Type 517 Cine Film using Bellini Euro HC 1+31 for 12 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry in my bathroom. I digitised it with my Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi 35mm film holder, Pixl-Latr and A5 size led light pad. I processed the RAW files with Affinity Studio.

As I was processing my photos, I could see I had got the choice of Orange filter for the bright sunshine spot on. I am confident with using Aperture Priority on my OM-2 and it made processing my RAW files a quick and easy process. I could see the difference between the filters, with the photos taken with an orange filter having a darer sky and a bit more contrast than those taken with a yellow filter fitted, but it's not a huge difference. Overall, I'm happy with my little experiment and I will try the red filter if we get some summer sunshine.

Here are a few of my favourite photos from my roll of Type 517 Cine Film shot with my Olympus OM-2 and orange and yellow filters. I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.