Lomography Fantôme 8 - single roll review

Lomography Fantôme 8 35mm film

Approaching two years ago at the time of writing, I posted a short 'single roll' review on the Lomography Berlin Kino 400 film. This had been one of the rolls of film that I had won as part of the #ShittyCameraChallenge prize (sponsored by David Walster - @196photo on Twitter), four different rolls of 35mm black and white film, all of which were new to me. One of the other rolls was Lomography Fantôme 8; like the other Lomomgraphy film, the box has the description '35mm KINO film', but unlike the 'Berlin' film, Fantôme 8's origins are not those of a camera film, used to generate a negative–which its low ISO of 8 indicates. According to Alex Luyckx, Fantôme 8 is Orwo DP31. Orwo's data sheet describes it thus:

ORWO duplicating positive film DP 31 serves as a film for the production of intermediate positives (master positives). Due to is panchromatic sensitisation this film can be used for duplicating from black & white negatives as well as from colour negatives producing well-balanced grey values referring to original colours. Special features of this film are the excellent resolving power and the extraordinary fine grain

As a very low ISO film, I had been anticipating that I'd want to use the roll of Fantôme 8 for something specific which would take advantage of its particular characteristics, rather than 'everyday' film photography. Last week I wanted to make an interpositive to create a print in negative from a negative, and naturally thought of the Fantôme 8 for precisely the qualities the data sheet describes (this, incidentally, was for the Undertow exhibition). I shot half the roll and developed it as needed, then decided that I may well as well find the time to use the remainder of the film. For the purposes of making the interpositive, I used a tripod and my Canon A-1 SLR; at 8 ISO, there are few situations in which hand-holding a camera with Fantôme 8 is practical, but I did expose a couple of frames hand-held, both of which were with the lens wide open at f1.8 and a fairly slow shutter speed. The second image below was at 1/20th, which will have probably introduced a small amount of camera shake, leading it to be less sharp as a result; the first image, silhouetting bare branches against a bright sky at a medium distance was rather easier 

Canon A-1 with Lomography Fantôme 8

Canon A-1 with Lomography Fantôme 8

The first image above was shot on the end of the half of the roll I had used first, and the high contrast of the image was fairly evident. I used Kodak HC-110 at dilution H, 1+63 from concentrate, with a time of 14 minutes at 20ºC (the Orwo data sheet, unsurprisingly for a motion picture film, gives D96 as a developer). The film has probably the clearest base of any I've used–and was also extremely curly once developed. Having used half the film first, and assessing the results, this gave me an idea of how to approach using the remainder of the film. Thanks to its high contrast, in terms of subjects, for most frames I avoided including much or any sky in the composition, concerned it would render almost entirely bright and featureless (as a panchromatic film, it would have been possible to use a yellow filter); the image below was one of the few with a significant area of sky in the frame.

Canon A-1 with Lomography Fantôme 8

I may have been cautious in this, but the few frames with bright sky and bare branches silhouetted against it brought up a different problem in scanning: the clear base introduced a form of halation in the  scanning of the negatives, with the light of the scanner passing through these clear areas and reflecting back inside the scanner. This is an effect I've noticed with a few other films, but this was particularly intrusive here. In the image below it is a rather disruptive artefact of the scanning process; I imagine that darkroom printing would not have the same problem.

Canon A-1 with Lomography Fantôme 8

Close-up crop from scan

Given Fantôme 8's characteristics, I had hoped for overcast weather conditions for photographing, not uncommon here in February, but instead I found it was an afternoon of intermittent, if hazy sunshine. To lessen the high contrast of the film, using the Canon A-1, with its double exposure capability, on a number of frames, I was able to use the technique of pre-exposure to raise the shadow values. To do this, I first shot a frame of a grey card without focussing three and a half stops below the camera's indicated exposure, then pushed in the multiple exposure switch before engaging the film advance, which, with the multiple exposure switch engaged, simply cocks the shutter without moving the film. After development, the frames which had pre-exposure were easily distinguishable on the negatives, although in scanning, with many frames the differences were not as great as I might have expected.

Canon A-1 with Lomography Fantôme 8

Canon A-1 with Lomography Fantôme 8 and pre-exposure

The most successful use of this technique is demonstrated in a pair of frames in which the subject was the low winter sun reflecting of a puddle, with the surroundings otherwise in shadow, which wouldn't be a subject easy to expose for a film with greater latitude: the pre-exposure here opens up the shadow detail just enough to define the landscape which becomes a little lost in the first image, where more exposure would lose detail in the highlights.

Canon A-1 with Lomography Fantôme 8

Canon A-1 with Lomography Fantôme 8 and pre-exposure

A better test would be to print from these negatives in the darkroom, to be able to properly appreciate the difference the pre-exposure has made. However, for some of the images here, it does appear to have benefitted the negatives. As a general preference, longer tonal scales in negatives I find easier to work with (which was, in part, the frustration I felt with Ferrania P30); for many or most subjects it's a general look that I prefer, and, as a technique, using pre-exposure with Fantôme 8 here has softened some of the film's particular qualities. Many of the examples of the film that I've seen online play on these high-contrast qualities, and, had I been wanting that look, and found subjects appropriate for it, Fantôme 8 would have been ideal: I do feel that I found it a bit more flexible than I had anticipated. With the some of the compositions in which I was mindful in not including the sky, I found that there was something–a little–of the 'ungrounded' quality of some of Muybridge's photographs of Yosemite (on a much less grand scale of course) which I had been looking at again recently, in which the lack of a horizon or discernible foreground places the viewer in an uncertain relation to the scene depicted. Having used the film initially for a purpose not dissimilar to its original usage, then, finding the right subject matter and an appropriate technique for the film's limitations, I found myself liking Lomography Fantôme 8 rather more than I had expected to.

Sources/further reading

Mastering the new Lomography Fantome Kino 8

Orwo DP31 data sheet (PDF)

Alex Luyckx on Lomography Fantome 8

Fantome 8 on the casualphotophile

Fantome 8 on 35mmc

Undertow at Unit 1 Gallery

Moving below the surface current and in a different direction, the subterranean emotion is held carefully under the surface, as the understated surface half reveals and half-conceals the turmoil beneath.†

When prevailing discourses tip towards hyperbole, generalisations or simplification, there is a need to

swim against the current, to carve out a space that allows for ambiguity, correspondence, and a quieter

voice. In the employment of few words, a scale of action or use of minimal materials, understatement

can be both a way of confronting moments of crisis, or of evading them. Undertow brings together a

group of artists working in dialogue around these concerns. The Undertow research group's remit is

open, as is the shape it takes, and the work is rooted in the sensibilities of material and material

understanding. Our practices span the use of text, ceramics, wood, paper, paint, film, photography.

This exhibition is an opportunity to regroup, to re-open conversations and begin new ones, to test

ideas in the absence of pre-conceived outcomes, but with purpose and direction. What emerges in the

work coalesces around language, data, codes, a collapsing of scale, of how a still surface half-reveals,

half-conceals subterranean undercurrents.

†. Michael O’Neil, and Madeleine Callaghan, (editors), ‘Situated Sequences and Marginal Voices’, in Twentieth Century British and Irish Poetry: Hardy to Mahon, 2011 

Undertow Research blog

Alex Simpson
Alison Rees
Lauren Ilsley
Nicholas Middleton
Sarah Wishart
Tana West

Unit 1 Gallery

1 Bard Road, London W10 6TP

3rd-25th March 2023

Tuesday-Saturday 11am-6pm

Private view, Thursday 2nd March 6-9pm