FlicFilm Aurora800 test roll

[joelbolden]

I recently saw some adds/reviews for FlicFilm Aurora800 that piqued my curiosity, so I ordered 2 rolls; one to shoot in an AF camera and one to shoot in a manual SLR. I'd never shot anything higher than ISO 400 before, for some reason, and I was curious. This roll was shot in my Minolta Alpha-9. The other roll is in my Pentax LX and is almost finished. The blog I'd watched had compared it to Porta800 and Cinestill 800T, which in their shots came out favorably in comparision. That, and the fact that it's a couple of bucks cheaper than the other two made it interesting. When it came to shooting it, the first glitch to occur was with the camera. When I loaded it into the a-9 I assumed that the camera would automatically select the proper ISO. It didn't. It selected 400. It wasn't until the 4th shot that I thought to check. I went into custom and changed it to 800. Not that exposing it at 400 would be bad; in fact it might be an improvement. It's just that not realizing it I would have sent the film to The Darkroom with no pushing instruction. As it was when I received the scans( I hadn't noted the different ISO's when I sent it in), I couldn't differentiate between the first four at 400 and the rest at box speed. The Darkroom tends to try and balance frames, so I'm not sure if there is a difference. I'll have to look at the negartives. The second glitch occured when I tried a couple of night shots handheld. I live out in the country where there are no lights except from people's houses/barns. I tried a couple of shots at my neighbors' house where the only light was from his windows/porch. The shots would have been fine if I'd used a rest/tripod, but were ruined by motion blur. Lesson learned. My overall impression of the film is quite favorable. The color rendition is excellent and the grain is better than what I get in some of the consumer quality, lower ISO films I use. Since I've never used Porta or Cinestill I can't make any comparisons there. Since it's the same price as the Cinestill400D film I've been using for everyday shooting, I've just ordered a couple more rolls. I have the option of shooting at box speed for added light

sensitivity or pushing it one stop for added detail(probably).

 

[webestang64]

Thanks for the review. We have not had a roll of that come to our lab yet so this helps. It kinda has the same look as the old Ektapress 400 I used to shoot and push to 800-1600.