Astrum FN-64

Astrum FN-64 is one of the last B&W films still rolling off the original Svema machinery in Shostka, Ukraine. The Svema plant stopped active production around 2003, but Astrum picked up what remained of the equipment and put a handful of formulas back into limited production. FN-64 is the most distinctive survivor. It is panchromatic, rated ISO 64, coated on a 0.10mm polyester base thin enough to give some minilab scanners a wobble.

The interesting spec is the spectral response. FN-64 extends sensitivity into the near infrared, out to roughly 750nm. That is not full-on IR like the discontinued Kodak HIE, but it is far enough past visible red that a deep red filter produces a noticeable Wood effect: foliage lightens, skies darken, skin smooths. Without a filter, the film renders blue skies a touch darker than most ISO 100 stocks. Some shooters compare the result to Tri-X with a light orange filter built in.

Grain is fine, sharpness is high, contrast sits a hair above neutral. D-76 stock or 1:1 is the obvious developer, with reported times around six minutes at 20 Celsius. Rodinal 1:25 at six and a half minutes gives more visible grain and more bite to the edges, which works well on architecture. Latitude is narrow for a modern emulsion: roughly ISO 32 to ISO 100 by Astrum's own data sheet.

A practical wrinkle is the cassette. Astrum loads FN-64 into reusable plastic cassettes without DX coding, so any camera that defaults to DX falls back to ISO 100. Set your meter manually. The plastic shell is opaque enough that loading instructions ask you to work in subdued light.

Available in 35mm through Freestyle, Foto Impex, and Ukrainian-Polish distributors in periodic batches. A hand-rolled 120 version surfaces occasionally through Photrio group buys but is not stocked at standard retailers.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.31. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A 30-second meter reading becomes about 90 seconds at the negative, which lines up with Tri-X and HP5+ closely enough that one mental table covers all three.