Film Washi X 100 35mm

Overview

Film Washi buys "X" in as an industrial technical stock — a film that was not originally made for still photography — has it factory-slit and perforated to 35 mm, and hand-spools it into recycled cassettes at its own workshop in Brittany. Its defining property is the absence of the orange colour mask that every modern C-41 film carries: the base is essentially clear, and Film Washi describes the result as warm-toned and highly saturated, recalling the first colour negative films of the 1940s and 50s. Because there is no mask to fight, the same roll can be developed in C-41 as a colour negative or in E-6 as a slide, and you can leave that decision until the roll reaches the lab — Lomig Perrotin named the film after the big X that cross-process orders were marked with at the photo lab where he once worked. Tell your lab which process you want, and tell them the film is maskless: any automated colour correction that assumes an orange mask will fight the whole character of the film. The recycled cassette carries no DX code, so set ISO 100 on the camera by hand — Film Washi recommends its 135 films for manual cameras without automatic film advance — and load and unload out of direct sunlight. Film Washi publishes no datasheet for X, the only film in its current 135 range without one, so there are no official development times, no latitude figure and no grain data, and the parent emulsion has never been named. Photographers commonly report thin shadows when the film is metered at box speed in contrasty or indoor light and give it a little more exposure; that is user experience, not a maker specification. This is a special pre-order item: we order it from France batch by batch, so it does not ship from stock and we cannot promise a delivery date.