Washi F

Washi F is fluorographic X-ray film, converted by Lomig Perrotin at Film Washi in Brittany for use in still cameras. The original emulsion was coated for the mobile lung-screening units that toured rural areas in mid-century public health campaigns, mass-imaging chests to catch tuberculosis early in working populations. The film never saw a regular camera first time around. Perrotin's one-man shop gives salvage stocks a second use.

Orthochromatic sensitivity means the film is blind to red, so you can load and process under safelight without fogging. The base is blue polyester, 100 micron, deliberately tinted to ease the eyes of radiologists reading screening films under bright viewing boxes. The blue stays in the negative after processing. Scans need a channel correction or you keep the cool cast. There is no anti-halation layer.

That missing backing is the visual signature. Highlights diffuse and glow in a way no panchromatic stock does. Skies behind branches bleed into foliage. Window light bounces off the back of the base and back through the emulsion. The effect reads as ghostly or dreamlike. Wrong film for clinical sharpness.

Box speed is 100, and being orthochromatic the film treats reds and oranges as if they were not there. Skin tones go dark and dramatic, either a gift or a curse depending on the portrait. Foliage renders with the contrast of an early twentieth century print. HC-110 dilution B at the standard time works. Rodinal 1:50 at nine minutes gives clean results. Avoid high-acutance developers; the diffusion is the visual work.

Available in 35mm and 120. The 35mm rolls include extra leader length, so loading under safelight or in a changing bag gets you 30 frames instead of 24.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.31. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A 30-second exposure becomes about 90 seconds at the negative. The fluorographic origin means the film was designed for the millisecond flash of an X-ray tube, so long behavior is not industrially characterized. Bracket past a minute.