News

As we know, Kodak have decided to stop the production of the Readyload films. Many photographers find the Readyload very useful especially when one needs to make photographs outdoors in dusty places: in fact, it is undoubtedly much more convenient to work with a film that has been preloaded in its holder by the manufacturer, and that needs to be extracted only in the darkroom for development, than to have to load and unload the holder. More than that, with Readyload there is less weight to carry, since it is no longer necessary to bring along all the holders but only the spines. My friend Robert Hallock, photographer in Massachusetts, suggests to test the Acros by Fuji that are still sold in Readyload version. This is what he wrote me: “A photographer friend tells me that because Kodak will no longer make Readyload film packages, he has tried Fuji Acros Quickloads and finds that it is very much like Tmax-100. I plan to use Tmax-100 in the film holders but for special place where dust is a big problem (like the southwest of the US), maybe the Fuji black and white Quickloads will work fine as a replacement for Tmax-100 in Readyloads. Apparently Fuji will continue to make the special holders. My friend says that the film gives him results a lot like Tmax-100. I have not tried it, but may do so with some test sheets just to see how it compares”. This is very good advice, but in Italy Acros 4x5” is not on sale, maybe it has never been imported, and since even standard films are hard to be found, try to imagine Readyload! The only possibility is to order them via Internet, which is rather expensive, due to shipping and custom clearance costs. Normally B&H Photovideo has the best online prices.