Embracing weird and unusual film - Svema MZ-3

For 2020, one of my resolutions is to shoot more film than I did in 2019, and I’ve started the year off with a bang, having already shot several rolls since January 1st. I even went to Hocking Hills last weekend and only brought my RB67 and shot several rolls, with no digital equipment as a back-up. Now that’s hardcore!

Calvary Chapel - Dayton, Ohio. @f/16, 1 second

One of the films I shot last weekend was Svema MZ-3, purchased from The Film Photography Project store. MZ-3 is a blue sensitive 35mm film, with very fine grain. And an ASA/ISO rating of 3. Yes, 3. Not exactly a film that you’d load up if you are shooting street photography in mixed light, but its great for landscapes and other things that don’t move while your camera is on a tripod. It was originally a motion picture film, and FPP hand-rolls it into 24 exposure rolls.

More on the film here: https://filmphotographystore.com/products/35mm-bw-film-svema-mz3-1-roll.

The roll I shot at Hocking Hills was the second roll of it that I’ve shot, having tried it out the prior week in Dayton at the Calvary Cemetery. It was a bright, cloudless day at Calvary, and at f/16 I was shooting exposure times of 1 second.

To be transparent, I didn’t think I was going to like this film. I’ve shot some weird films in the past and most of the time I feel like I’m just wasting my time and money. And before I shot that first roll I was prepared to feel the same.

Calvary Cemetery - Dayton, Ohio. @f/16, 1 second

But I was wrong.

For some reason I really like the look this film has. Yes, it does NOT have a great deal of dynamic range, so forget about getting details in your shadows while not blowing out the highlights. That’s not gonna happen. You have to pick which one is important and shoot based on that. So in these shots at Calvary the bright blue sky is white. But I love the contrast and details, and I didn’t have to do much with the scans in the way of post-processing other than just some typical dust removal.

The other thing about MZ-3 is that there isn’t a great deal of info out there in regards to development methods and reciprocity. I’ve worked through both now so I’m happy to share what works FOR ME. Take this as just suggestive – what works for me may or may not work for you, but maybe it’s a good place for you to start. Also know that if you do some research on varying film forums, you’ll find that there may be different versions of this “Svema” film floating around that may or may not be made by them or the new incarnation of the factory. In fact the rolls I have that came from FPP have “K.ODAK” in the rebate area in a few spots on the roll. So it may or may not be Kodak or Svema or ?

I like to develop with Ilfosol 3 and Rodinal. Typically I use Rodinal for semi-stand development and the Ilfosol 3 for most everything else. There weren’t any formulas for Rodinal, and none for Ilfosol 3 in the 1:9 ratio mix that I like, but I did find a time for it in 1:14 on the Massive Dev chart. With that, some other references, and some back-of-the-napkin math, I came up with the following:

Ilfosol 3 @ 1:9 for 6:00 minutes, 20C (68f)

Stop and Fix as normal

FPP Archival Wash

Photo-Flo

This seems to work fairly well if shot at the ISO 3 box speed. The other interesting thing is that the un-exposed spaces between frames goes REALLY clear after fixing, like almost glass clear. Semi-stand developing may be an option as well, but from personal experience in the past, bromide drag from the sprocket holes could be an issue. I’ve been burned a few times doing this with 35mm film, so as a general rule I only semi-stand develop 120 film.

At Hocking Hills shooting waterfalls, I was able to bracket several shots to see what the reciprocity failure was like at anything over 1 second. It turns out that the exposures that looked the best were done where I doubled, then doubled again, the calculated exposure time. So for example, if I came up with the correct exposure of 10 seconds with my meter, then the best looking negative was a 40 second final exposure when allowing for reciprocity failure. I know that’s not an exact science and someone may wax on about whether or not that’s correct, but it seemed to work fine for me.

Upper Falls at Old Man’s Cave, Hocking Hills Ohio. 40 seconds at f/16 with a circular polarizer.

Both rolls were shot with my Mamiya RB67 ProSD in a 220 back with 35mm film adapters. This means that its shooting basically two 35mm frames wide, similar to what you get if you shoot with an Xpan and close to the ratio of what my GX617 shoots (albeit on smaller film, of course, compared to the GX617’s 120 film negative). The 24 exposure FPP rolls net out to about 10 frames in this configuration.

Lower Falls at Old Man’s Cave, Hocking Hills Ohio. 40 seconds at f/16 with a circular polarizer.

I bought more of the film recently from FPP so I’ll be shooting more of it. The hoarder in me wants to buy a BUNCH more as it may be gone at some point, but then I have to remember that I have a lot of other rolls of film just waiting to be shot!

OK, that’s a quick word on Svema MZ-3. If you haven’t shot this film yet and come across this while you are researching, I hope it helps a bit. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out! Or if you have some thoughts to share on your experience with MZ-3, I’d love to hear them.

Jeremy