It took me a while to get round to shooting this roll of Svema 100, which I picked up from Analogue Wonderland a few months ago. If I’m honest I think the appeal was in the name; a combination of two Russian words, Светочувствительные Материалы, translated meaning Photosensitive Materials. A few years back I made an attempt at learning basic Russian prior to a visit to St Petersburg, and though most of what I learned is gone now, I’m still gassed whenever I can spell out/read anything in Cyrillic script. Aside from the name/design appeal, I generally like trying out new black and white films.

I shot this using my dad’s old Chinon CP-7M, and hesitated a little over whether to develop it myself, given how badly I scratched the last film I self-developed. I had a little practice run loading film onto the spool with an old film though, and in the end it loaded fine. FPP (the Film Photography Project) describes this film as having “a high efficiency layer on top of its emulsion to prevent scratching”, which apparently did its job.

I developed it using Rodinal, and was reasonably pleased with the results. Quite high contrast, and very smooth grain wise. A couple of the shots indoors were wholly underexposed, and as always I can never quite get shooting plants in black and white right. Maybe because I love green so much.