Marix · ISO 100 B&W negative
Marix Black and White 100
Marix Black and White 100 is Fomapan 100 in different packaging. Cloudoc Corporation in Osaka licenses the emulsion from Foma in the Czech Republic, repackages it into 35mm cassettes and 120 spools under the Marix name, and sells through Japanese retailers including Yodobashi and Kitamura. If you have shot Fomapan 100 Classic, you have shot this. Same cubic emulsion, same factory in Hradec Kralove.
What changes is the cassette and the availability story in Japan. Marix supplies the film in plug-end cassettes with no seam at the spool, which is useful for home developers because there is no tape splice to wrestle in the changing bag. The cassettes are not DX-coded, so meter cameras need to be set manually to 100. RMS granularity sits at 13.5, the number Foma publishes for Fomapan 100, and the base thickness is 125 microns in 35mm.
Why buy Marix instead of Foma original. In Japan, easier to get and slightly cheaper at some retailers than imported Fomapan. Outside Japan the case is thinner. The film is identical and the rebrand markup often is not worth it.
Develop the same way you would Fomapan 100. D-76 stock at 20C runs six to seven minutes. Rodinal 1:25 finishes in four. Xtol stock comes in around five to six. Rate at box 100 in flat light; in high contrast scenes pull to 80 and the negatives print cleaner. The grain is old-school cubic, not tabular, so do not expect T-Max 100 resolution. The look is closer to a mid-century European pictorial emulsion.
Available in 35mm 36-exposure cassettes, 120 spools, and 100-foot bulk cans through Marix in Japan. No 4x5 sheet, which is one of the few things Foma offers that the Marix lineup skips.
Reciprocity exponent is 1.31, identical to the Foma source. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 30-second exposure becomes about 90 seconds at the negative. Cubic-grain architecture loses shadow detail faster than tabular stocks on long work, so past about a minute consider rating down a third of a stop on top of the bump.
How the app handles this stock
- Box speed: ISO 100. 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.