Ferrania · ISO 80 B&W negative
Ferrania P30
Ferrania P30 came back from the dead in February 2017 after FILM Ferrania spent three years rebuilding a coating line at the old Cairo Montenotte plant in Liguria. The emulsion is based on a hand-written 1958 formula from the original Ferrania research notebooks, and the company representative David Bias has stated publicly that the chemical difference between the current stock and the cinema film of the 1960s is statistically insignificant. It is closer to a working motion-picture revival than a new film borrowing an old name.
The silver content is the headline number: five grams per square meter, which is exceptional for a current B&W stock and accounts for the deep blacks and the almost invisible grain at ISO 80. Coated on triacetate base rather than the polyester now standard in most still films, which is the original cinema choice and part of why the look reads as period-correct. Pasolini, Rossellini and Fellini all shot on the original Pancro 30 cine stock through the late 1950s and 1960s; the 1958 still-film version is what De Sica used for parts of Two Women, the Sophia Loren picture.
Contrast is high and latitude is narrow. The Japan Camera Hunter review found about a stop and a half each way before shadows ink up or highlights wash out, which is closer to Fuji Neopan 1600's tonality than to anything in the Tri-X family. FILM Ferrania officially recommends D-96 at 21 degrees Celsius for eight minutes with continuous gentle agitation, which is a cinema developer rather than the D-76 most still photographers default to. Rodinal stand development gets you ink-stain blacks and bromide drag. If you want the proper P30 look, follow the manufacturer's spec.
Currently available in 35mm and 120, both produced in small batches.
The 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. The narrow latitude means that correction is not optional for tripod work in low light: there is no room for the math to be wrong.
How the app handles this stock
- Box speed: ISO 80. Picker exposes pull/push chips so you can shoot it at any speed you want and the meter follows.
- Reciprocity: Above one second the app raises metered time to the power of 1.31.
- Expired film: if you load an old roll, set the expiry year and storage in the app and the ISO scales for you. B&W negative decay rates are baked in.