It all started with curiosity. While shopping online to refill my fridge with film for the summer season, I noticed a new film announced at one of the online shops: Spur Ultra with a resolution of 800 LP/mm.

I can hardly resist trying new things out, it’s a gene in my family. My dad bought a colour TV a year before there were any colour transmissions, and I had a digital camera when recording to non-standard mini floppy discs was state of the art. Hitting the “buy now” button for 4 rolls of film and a bottle of matching developer button was a reflex, not a decision.

Now I started reading about it and learned that this film is the latest incarnation of a series of ultra-high-resolution films made by the Spur company along with a new version of their special developer. It is a low contrast document film and it takes the special developer to “beat it soft” for normal photographic use.

A few days later the postman rings and delivers my purchase along with a parcel from the UK: a macro reverse adapter for my Pentax ME-Super. I had almost forgotten about that one, another curiosity purchase made recently. Now I had two things to try out, which one first?

Solution: try both together.

The film went straight into the camera set at ISO 32, and my SMC Pentax-M 28mm f/2.8 lens was mounted backwards for some macro work. What to shoot? Flowers, insects? No! A quick search through my garage yielded some much more interesting targets for my high definition macro setup. I like the film and the images are amazing.

Please do not ask me “how fine the grain” or “does it indeed resolve 800LP/mm”? I have no clue; my Epson scanner is far from being a match to the qualities of the film. It shows no grain and the images have impressive detail.

Good enough for me!

~ Peter

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One response to “5 Frames… Of macros with Spur Ultra R 800 (EI 32 / 35mm format / Pentax ME Super)”

  1. Wow, the pictures are incredible sharp and don’t seem to have any grain at all. Are these indeed film and not digital? Where can i buy that film?

 

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