A few weeks ago I got sent a package from Silberra in Russia. If you haven’t heard of them yet, it’s no wonder. They have been around for some time in Russia as a small scale film supply manufacturer but only recently decided to go international. I got sent some films as a part of their international testing before the launch of their Indiegogo campaign on October 25th.

One of the films was Silberra PAN50. This is a film derived from Agfa surveillance films but with changes to the emulsion to make it more suitable for the modern consumer.

I wanted to find out how this film did compared to ILFORD Pan F Plus, which I’ve used several times before, so I went to a place called Helleviga in Søgne here in southern Norway. It was a very windy day and I thought I would try to catch some motion blur and some longer exposures. I also thought that the rocky shore would create a good contrast to the whites of the breaking waves. Silberra PAN50 has an increased sensitivity to infrared light and I figured this would work favorably in bringing out contrast on an otherwise bleak day.

The camera I used was a Canon EF with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. The EF is nicknamed “Black Beauty”, but I must admit I prefer my Canon A1. Unfortunately, the A1 was at the camera hospital to cure it from the infamous shutter squeak.

I hope you guys like the shots as they probably cost me my 50mm after I dropped it into a puddle of saltwater 🙁


I’ve gotta tell you guys, I think I’ve found my favorite ISO 50 film.

The film was developed in Silberrra Ascorol and I think it really delivered in terms of sharpness and contrast. The contrast is out of this world and yet as you can see the tonal range is quite broad. I have yet to print anything from it in the darkroom, but I imagine it to produce crisp and fine grained images suitable for larger prints. Maybe I’ll get around to it during the weekend.

In terms of exposure I stayed at the lower end of the aperture scale and shutter speeds ranging from 1/2 second to 8 seconds. There wasn’t much reciprocity failure to talk about, but when I tested it turned out to be very close to ILFORD Pan F Plus.

I really do hope Silberra’s Indiegogo campaign is successful because that means I get to enjoy more this film in 120 and I’ve got my eyes set on putting some of this through my Pentacon Six with the 50mm f/4.0 CZJ Flektogon lens.

Oh, and I am happy to say that my A1 was cured of its shutter squeak (thank you, @random.salmon)

~ Stian

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2 responses to “5 Frames… With Silberra PAN50 (EI 50 / 35mm / Canon EF)”

  1. @SilberraFilm @HamishGill Looks absolutely beautiful (but difficult to judge from an iPhone screen) H… https://t.co/Dk9IXfmS02

  2. Thank you Stian for putting this article together, its great to see some more images with the Silberra Pan 50, I am backing Silberra and its part of the perks package i have opted in for, so its great to see I made a wise choice 🙂 You did such a great job with the exposures and those images are just antastic ! I just hope I can get some shots close to that quality when the film becomes available.

 

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