A Few Frames for 127 Day, Dec. 7 2023

Note: There is some glitchy weirdness going on with my web site. It replaced this post, with an older one. Hopefully this repost will remain intact:

Yesterday was 127 Day and I was determined to get out there and get something, not necessarily something of any artistic merit, but something nonetheless.

I was prepared, the Sawyer's was loaded with Rerapan 400, which I hadn't had great luck with in the past, but I'm reassessing that. I would have preferred to shoot the couple rolls of 1970's Verichrome Pan that I have in my other two 127 cameras, but I didn't think there would be enough sunlight for the ISO 64 that I shoot Verichrome at.

The day was predicted to be windy, snowy and rainy. I wasn't too much looking forward to that, Winter's cold is already cramping my style more than a little bit.

I'm moving so slowly these days, that even though I tried to rush, I didn't get out there until early afternoon. As it turns out the rain and snow failed to materialize, only the icy wind showed up on schedule.

As I said earlier, I haven't had great luck with Rerapan 400 in the past, but maybe It's the combination of developing these in Xtol (Bellini Eco Film) and new scanner drivers (the latest version of Vuescan), but I was pleasantly surprised by these, not the compositions, but the quality of the film itself. The contrast level was better than expected and the grain seems pleasing.

All in all, if I can continue to get decent results from it, I'm looking forward to shooting more Rerapan 400, if not to the weather that forces me to use faster films like this.

I was looking for some info on the origins of Rerapan 400, but I couldn't find anything conclusive. It seems likely that it's one of the Agfa family of films, several of which I'm quite fond of.

I did find this little blurb on the Blue Moon Camera site:

Rera Pan 400 is an ISO 400, panchromatic, black and white film manufactured for 127 format cameras. It was introduced in 2019, after the discontinuation of Rera Pan 100 the previous year. There is much speculation regarding the film stock of Rera Pan, with the most likely candidate being Rollei RPX 400, as they share many of the same characteristics and developing times. If true, master rolls of 46mm Rollei RPX 400 are likely produced in Europe and then shipped to Japan, where the film is assembled by Kawauso-Shoten, and the shipped back to Europe and North America for distribution.

za/sd