Alright here is another blog post that has been long in the working. Last year I got myself a 4x5 camera, and was looking around for cheap film to learn the camera with and fell on Shanghai GP3 straight from China. I don’t remember exactly what I paid but I remember it was not very much compared to other alternatives.
I also got a few FRESH rolls of GP3 in 120, as the previous time I tried it the rolls were a few years out of date and totally destroyed by backing paper issues and fogging.
The emulsion is the same in sheet film and medium format, but Shanghai has the absolutely worst quality backing paper. It is too thick, so you get fat rolls, too large spacings, and you will often times lose the last frame due to this. Then the adhesive on the strip is weak, and often the entire thing will just pop open in your backpack, and then you will ruin some more shots. There is often times defects in the film too, like dirt, dust, or unevenness in the emulsion.
All this is also true for the Catlabs “version”, which is exactly the same film but in a nicer box. For some reason the Catlabs people have said that oh no this is not the same film, they just produce it for us, but there is no doubt in my mind that it is just GP3. I doubt the chinese have the capacity to produce more emulsions, and Catlabs does not have the expertise to develop a new one.
The sheet film obviously doesn’t have any problems like this. They come in nice boxes, the sheets are nice and thick, I don’t have much to complain about really!
I would rate these films at ISO80, so not far off box speed really. I have developed in XTOL, Fuji SPD and the emulsion does seem to work nicely with pretty much everything.
As for the image quality, I actually really like the way GP3 looks. There is something “creamy” about the midtones that I enjoy. The grain is what you would expect for an ISO100 film, it is sharp enough, the film prints easily in the darkroom. If the backing paper was slightly better I could easily see myself shooting more of this. And as for large format, I recommend it for sure. It is a cheap way to get into large format without breaking the bank. You can afford to do some mistakes with this film instead of say, Portra which will cost you an arm and a leg for a box of 10 sheets.
Here are my development times:
120 - Fuji SPD 1+1 @ 20c - 7min 15sek
120 - XTOL 1+1 @ 20c - 10min
120 - Rodinal 1+50 @ 20c - 15min
4x5 - XTOL 1+2 @ 20c - 14min
Here are some pictures (square ones are 120, other ones are 4x5):
Alright that is what I had for you this time. Let me know in the comments what you think.