FILM Ferrania, which grew from the legendary Italian Film Co, Ferrania, announced today that their first product, FERRANIA P30® ALPHA, an 80 ISO, 35mm, black and white cinema film for still photography, will begin pre-sales mid-February 2017.
The film is a reproduction of Ferrania P30, their legendary black and white film that was used in many Italian movies in the 50's and 60's by Felini, De Sica, Rosseline and Pasolini, among others. With a high silver content, FILM Ferrania CEO Nicola Baldini states, "Each frame is like a piece of jewelry".
Dave Bias, Marketing Director for FILM Ferrania, was kind enough to answer a couple of quick questions we had.
On Color Production:
They don't have a firm date but, based on progress of the last few months, they are looking at a June/July window that they are confident they can hit. Kickstarter backers will receive info regarding the same in an announcement today.
Regarding P30 in 120 Format:
"...we have nearly all the pieces in place to do so, however there is an issue with the backing paper. Basically, there are only a couple of people left in the world who make the stuff, and buying it from them would drive up the cost of the final product beyond what we are comfortable with. For the next couple of weeks, our tiny team in Italy is completely focused on creating the final 35mm ALPHA product and will then immediately start working on color - but there will be time in between to make more P30 and cut it in whatever size we want. We recently had a volunteer step up to offer her services in helping us to source new backing paper for 120 - and we will of course keep everyone posted"
And on processing of the film:
"Our pre-production batch that produced the (flawed) sample images was very difficult to process. FERRANIA P30® ALPHA is cinema film for still photographers. To the best of our knowledge, the only one to be released in many many years. Cinema film is generally more difficult to process for a variety of reasons - mostly because it needs to run through cameras and projectors at great speed with the same perfect exposure on every frame.
Thus our film "wants" to be processed in a very specific way with very precise temperature and timing and constant agitation during the chemical bath. We must instead "tweak" the film to work in any lab in the world without such strict limitations - as best we can, of course. This is being addressed this week in the factory with several different options on the table.
Also, we have called it ALPHA for a specific reason. We want to put it out there and receive feedback from photographers and labs everywhere. We must do this to collect as much data as we can - and with that data, we can mature the film from ALPHA to BETA to the final version that we will make forever".
We are excited about this news, for FILM Ferrania and the Film Community on a whole and wish Ferrania the best of luck and continued success!
More info can be found on their website:
http://www.filmferrania.it/
Some sample shots from pre-production test batch:
