I mentioned to EM that my Kosmo film had just arrived and he demanded a 5 Frames With… pronto! So here we are.

Stephen Dowling is the man producing the film, his photoblog is Kosmo FotoStephen’s blog used to be called Zorki Foto and his film was going to be called Zorki Foto Mono100, but this would likely have infringed lots of copyrights, so he recently changed the blog name to Kosmo Foto – an excellent choice, in my opinion, keeping the Russian feel.

Apparently I have a chance of being a Kosmonaut when I send Stephen some photos taken with the film. So in anticipation, this is Kosmonaut Harrison’s report! The Kosmo Foto films box artwork is brilliant, they are currently displayed on my bookshelf.

Enough about the box, we’d better look at the film, which only cost me £4 a roll. These images were shot with a Helios 58mm f/2 lens. The film was developed in Fuji Negastar and scanned at AgPhoto Lab (I don’t process myself).

To view the images in full screen, click or tap below.

I popped into Manchester for a few hours, in the evening I went to my photo club’s portrait night and dragged a few club members in front of the lens to finish the roll. (You know what they say…a roll of film a day keeps the doctor away!) I wanted to see how the film faired under high and low contrast lighting. I was impressed when the scans arrived.

The contrast is quite high but retains the highlights. Under high contrast the shadows lost detail as expected. Skin tones are rendered in a pleasant way as can be seen from the studio shots, excuse my portrait skills, never my strong point. In fact it looks an ideal studio film. Kosmo Foto Mono 100 has excellent definition. The film was grainy, more so than ILFORD FP4 PLUS, but pleasantly in a traditional way.

I would encourage people to support these small film producers. This year has been especially kind to us film users with new films and camera bodies.

~ Phil Harrison

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4 responses to “5 Frames… With Kosmo Foto Mono 100 (EI 100 / 35mm format / Helios 58mm f/2)”

  1. @HamishGill I struggled with this film.

  2. This film is just repackaged Fomapan 100.

    1. You’d need to speak to Stephen at Kosmo about that.

  3. I’ve been waiting to see someone post their results from this, I had mine come through the door the other day but have such a backlog of film to get developed from my trip to Italy that it’s going to be some time before I get to use mine. It looks really quite good, the contrast is nice, exactly what I look for in a black and white film.

 

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