I recently grabbed some rolls of Svema 200 and 100, stocks that are new to me. The 200 made its way in to my Spotmatic and was my first roll of 2024.

I kept the camera out of the sun while loading and unloading, so I didn’t suffer from the light piping that FPP warns people about. But working with the super-thin film stock was tricky. I put this on a metal reel for development, so I don’t know if the thin stock is hard to load in a Patternson reel. But it’s definitely hard to slide the finished negatives in to sleeves. Like pushing a rope up a mountain. It made me appreciate thicker, stiffer stocks.

I used this roll to test the “easy” exposure adjustment method from the Way Beyond Monochrome book.

• Meter at -2/3 of box speed
• Develop for 85% of the recommended time
• Shoot it cloudy/indirect

Following that I metered at 125 and developed in Rodinal 1+50 for 12:00.

When I shot in more direct sun the resulting pictures ended up fairly flat and over-exposed. Not exciting. But the shots I took with indirect light turned out fairly nice.

I featured this photo over in the Winter Light post.

Rumble also served as a willing model for a few shots. These used my 105mm lens, which led to some odd focus due to its minimum focal distance. But I think the 3rd one turned out nice.

On the whole I liked Svema 200 fine. It feels like a classic b&w film. It didn’t blow me away, but it was also my first roll and I’d need several more to get a feel for it. It’s on the expensive side for B&W, though. So I may not revisit it for a while.

I didn’t experiment at all with the promised ‘near-infrared sensitivity’. Maybe when I load up the roll of Svema 100 I’ll grab a red filter and a tripod and spend an afternoon shooting a local garden.

Full roll.

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