[stevebrot]

Well, maybe not news flash, but definitely cultish! There is a rumor that the film manufacturing assets of Ferrania have been acquired by a new group of investors with the intent of reviving the Ferrania film business. The projected launch date for product is supposed to be sometime in 2014 with the company doing business under the name Film Ferrania s.r.l.

FILM Ferrania


Steve

(Google "Film Ferrania"...)

[LowVoltage]

That landing page kind of reminds me of those old Geocities pages that forever have the "under construction" sign posted.

Obviously, not in look, just spirit. I remember getting disposable cameras from customers that went to Europe on a trip; the cameras often had Ferrania film. Can't say much for the image quality, but that was usually due to the plastic optics and poor, poor lighting in the myriad cathedrals, etc. in which they weren't allowed to use flash!

[rt22306]

If I'm not mistaken, the last several rolls of Imation branded film that I used back in the day (after 3M had bowed out) were made in Italy. Film Ferrania, possibly? I used a few rolls; I don't remember many complaints about it.

Yes, I was a K-Mart shopper (3M made a lot of Focal branded film, until it was sold and became Imation).

edit: Yep, it was Film Ferrania (one site didn't give much info, but this one did..).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrania

[stevebrot]

Ferrania is sort of a cult film. While it was available, it was wildly popular with the Lomography crowd. I was introduced to it by Nesster (Jussi) on this site who was good enough to include a couple of rolls with a lens purchase.

As for image quality...fidelity is not Ferrania's strong suit. My current stash is the Solaris 100 product. It has moderately fine grain, but a strange sort of color cast is pretty much standard. It is sort of hard to describe in that the initial scans tend to look sort of dull with a tendency for reds to trend to orange and for rust tones and teal to be exaggerated. The cool part is that the scans respond REAL well to manipulation in post-processing. Do a little work with the color-specific sliders for saturation/luminance and play with the contrast and your drab shot becomes ART! In case you are wondering, the Solaris 400 has just a little more grain than the 100 and similar color. I have never tried the ISO 200 product. As noted above, most of the cheap, house-brand films of the last couple of decades have been Ferrania. The key is the "Made in Italy" label, though later production might be labeled "Made in EU".

Several of my personal favorites from the last couple of years have been taken with Ferrania an it will be a happy day if/when production resumes.


Steve

(...have even gone so far as to manipulate some of my digital images to LOOK like Ferrania...close, but not the real thing... )

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Last edited by stevebrot; 07-04-2013 at 08:41 AM.

[Jonathan Mac]

I've been following this on Flickr and as a diligent film fan I have signed up to the mailing list and liked the new Facebook page.

I received the following e-mail this afternoon. It's certainly good new and I wish them the best of luck.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to this mailing list.

Just a few words to thank everybody who subscribed, although no more than a single brand is shown at the moment on the Ferrania home page.

We think it is worth answering some questions that often arise on the discussion boards we are also following.

As you know, Ferrania discontinued its photographic products some years ago and after that some buildings and equipments were dismantled or sold because the destiny of film seemed to be compromised forever after introduction of digital. Obviously we dream to put the film in a new era where it can live in symbiosis with digital imaging technologies.

After more than one year of work, we are finally trying to start again with a small production of film. But rescaling a production workflow is not an easy process: some chemical products are not available anymore on the market, former Ferrania workers and engineers must be involved again in a completely new production workflow, etc.

We worked a lot on many of the above issues and now we are proud to say that the moment is arrived of really making film.

Right now there is a six month R&D project aiming to produce a first Jumbo of film. If during this period we are able to solve all the remaining technical issues and if the market gives us a reasonable preliminary feedback, we will be ready to go ahead and ship new film in the first quarter of 2014!

Ok, now the question is: what kind of film?
We think it is better to start revamping the very last produced emulsions. The first two that we will make are a color negative film derived from Ferrania Solaris FG-100 Plus (only for still photographs) and a professional color reversal film derived from Scotch Chrome 100.

And which formats?
We have the equipment to finish film in almost all photographic and motion picture formats: 110, 120, 126, 127, 135, 220, Super 8, Double 8, 16mm, 35mm and 70mm but at first we will put on line only the ones that are requested by the market.

More details are coming, please continue to follow us!

Cheers

The FILM Ferrania team

Personally, I will be buying some of the new film as soon as it comes out, to put my money where my mouth is and support this brave endeavour.

[stevebrot]

Scotch Chrome 100!!? Now that is a surprise. With any luck they will produce for 110 and 126 cartridges and 127 too!!! But for now I would be happy with 35mm and 120


Steve

[manntax]

+1 for more film on the market !

[gofour3]

Yeah good news! The Scotch Chrome 100 sounds interesting and right up my alley.

Phil.

[nparsons13]

With any luck they will produce for 110 and 126 cartridges and 127 too!!!

Steve

+1 I still have a couple of Ferrania 126 cartridges in the freezer in reserve for my Kodak Instamatic Reflex. I'd like to put that fine camera to use again if I could get film for it.

[Jonathan Mac]

Perhaps Ferrania will corner the market in currently discontinued film formats.