Dupont Superior 2 test

Chris spotted this canister of film--Dupont Superior 2--online last week and since the price was right, I had to try it. It's been hard to find much online about this film. What intrigued us from the get-go was the military expiration date on the film--June, 1966. That and the fact that it was made by Dupont--not a name I've been accustomed to associating with film.

The canister arrived Wednesday. Since the film is packaged on a motion picture reel, I couldn't just put the whole thing in the bulk loader as I normally would. Rather, I cut off a portion of film--enough for 30 exposures or so--and loaded that into the film loader and spooled up one test cartridge.

The film has an asa of 125, but since it was long expired, I decided to meter the first test roll at 100. Turns out, I might have gone 64 or so instead. As luck would have it, the weather on Thursday and Friday was pretty drab and rainy, so I had to do most of the test roll indoors which meant I had to contend with pretty low-light conditions. Not a good choice for this film. The good news, however, is that the film can still take/make an image.

Besides having to contend with low-light conditions, I made the less-than-brilliant choice to couple the Holga fisheye lens with the regular wide-angle lens I had on the Canon AE-1 Program. I'm guessing this messed up the metering while making the job of focusing a real challenge. Most of the shots on the test roll were out of focus and unexposed and the negatives were very thick or dense--lacking in contrast.
The best shots on the test roll were those that I didn't use the extra fisheye lens with and/or those that I took outdoors. This office shot, for example, and the one below of my brand new (to me) bun steamer!

















Since the weather is looking much better for this weekend, I've decided to run another test roll--this time using one of my Pentax Spotmatics, and taking shots outdoors. I've lost the fisheye lens and will meter the next roll at 64 and just hope for the best--or at least hope for better results than I had the first go-round. Speaking of which, I did a Diafine dev with the first test roll, but might try something else--HC-110 or a Rodinal stand.

A sampling of some of the other test shots appears below: