Film Washi Z 400 35mm

Overview

Z is not one of Film Washi's hand-coated papers: it is an industrially coated aerial-survey emulsion that the maker buys in and re-converts to camera formats in its Brittany workshop, where its original job was mapping — sensitivity running into the near infrared pulls apart masses of vegetation that ordinary panchromatic film renders as one flat grey. Film Washi rates it 400 ISO on a clear 100 µm polyester base and gives its spectral maximum as 750 nm, classing it as panchromatic with an extended red tail rather than as a true infrared film. The maker recommends it for landscape, citing strong contrast and unusually clean separation of greens, explicitly including under overcast weather; the infrared effect — dark sky, lightened reds and greens — can be exaggerated with a red filter, and no IR-pass filter is asked for anywhere in the datasheet. The clear base pipes light, so the datasheet tells you to load in shade and shoot three blank frames before starting the roll, and extra leader is supplied for exactly that. The 24-exposure cassettes are recycled and carry no DX code, so set 400 by hand — and note Film Washi's own caution that recycled cassettes are not recommended in fully automatic or motorised cameras. Development is ordinary black-and-white chemistry: the datasheet gives D-76 stock 10 min, Xtol stock 8 min, Rodinal 1+25 7 min and Ilfosol 3 1+9 4.5 min at 20 °C, Ilfotec RT Rapid undiluted for 70 s at 26 °C, and for any developer not on that list, the times and dilution for Ilford Delta at 400. In the darkroom it must be handled in total darkness — no safelight of any colour. Film Washi asks customers to check with their lab in advance only for films W, V, Y and R; Z is not one of them.