The Highest Resolution Film Images I've Ever Seen 

I used this film back 1987 for street photography. i was 22 years old back then. I remember the importance not to underexpose while taking photos. Kind regards from Copenhagen, Denmark. Back then the name of the film was kodak Technical Pan or Agfa Technical Pan. I remember it was a 80 Iso film

There is no Rollei company anymore. After much turbulence and rough times, the camera producer Rollei finally seized to exist in 2009 for good (and this company never made film, btw). The only Rollei existing today is the brand, which is owned by several companies for several global regions and/or product ranges. The brand-owner using it for Rollei films is a company near Hamburg in Germany, which, among other products in the camera accessory markets, buys bulk films it can find cheap across the globe, assembles it in different film formats, and labels and packages it with creative Rollei-based brands. What I like most about the Retro 80S is its clear film base, which makes it possible to develop it as a slide film, making it one of the very few 120 b&w films available in these times which can be used to create slides.

Appreciate for your sharing. I tried the 80S and came out pretty good as well. The high contrast and fine grain are my cup of tea turelly.

Fantastic review, super helpful details and examples, thanks so much for sharing!

Fantastic review with lots of helpful information in it. Thank you for putting this together!

I broadly agree with what you have said. I have used this film on and off for a long while, and the results have been mixed. I am no novice in film photography, more than 45 years of experience in fact. This film is not suitable for beginners, nor does it suit a broad range of lighting conditions. It is an aerial surveillnace film, so high resolving power and extended red sensitivity are the required prerequisites. It is not a full tone emulsion even in the best of lighting conditions. The film has about 5 stops of dynamic range, so you can expect the shadows to go near black and the highs block up, although it does better with highlights depending on the developer. The best developer used for this emulsion are compensating developers, but I have had very good results using Pyro based devlopers @ iso 32. I think that I once used the now discontinued SilverMax developer with very good results. FWIW, I find Ferrania P30 much more manageable than this beast, which is not far off the Adox CMS20II in terms of difficulty of developing, though it has atleast a stop more dynamic range.

Nice. I need to try this film. You mention how it could be unique for portraits and skin tone rendering, I wish you could have shown an example.

That is amazing

Great presentation.

The base is clear because it is not dyed gray to prevent light piping. It was intended for aerial photography, not general use.

Try shooting it at EI 50 and developing in Rodinal 1:250 (2ml for 500ml minimum) semi-stand. 1hour with 1 initial and 1 additional agitation at 30 minutes. It’s one of my favorites. I know Rodinal doesn’t seem like a great developer for hi-res but this combo really works.

I like Rollei Retro 80S a lot and regularly use it, in both 35mm and 120 formats, for studio portraits. These days I generally process in Rollei Supergrain as ASA80, but I quite like rating at ASA50 and processing in Rollei RLS Low Speed.

Thank you! I've never looked at this one - as I didn't like the faster speed Rollei films too much. It seems that it could be what I'm looking for - especially for smaller formats like halfframe or 24x24. Keep on your good work.

This is one of my favorite stocks! Especially with a green filter.

I ran a couple rolls of this film through my GW690ii and was initially blown away by the sharpness of the images. But once I looked at the scans on a large monitor I noticed a blotchiness in the lighter solid areas (the sky). Also, the last frame on both rolls had a mysterious, perfect circle imprinted on the image. The pro-lab I use (and with whom I've never had a problem) said they'd seen this before with rolls of Rollie 80S. Just a heads up.

Beautiful images and nicely presented

Great video. Thanks

Good video. Thanks for sharing your images. Some may not know the PenF is half frame. I think that's what you were getting at when pointing out that "even those images were sharp" -- the small size of the negative.

This is not a beginner film. Compared to most other B&W films on the market today it is unforgiving and has a steep learning curve. That being said, it is easily one of my all time favorite films. It is one of a kind and beautiful. Give it a try but be patient.

Props for proper Rollei pronounciation

Rollei Retro 80S it's an interesting film, but it's a very difficult one to shoot. I think the true speed of this film it's much slower, maybe 30-40 iso. You need to pull this film to get the best results, otherwise the shadows details will be almost gone. But that said, can be a very nice film. It can give very nice contrast but without loosing too much shadow detail if you expose it and develop it well.

Sounds very interesting. I've been using HP5 and FP4 for ages now, I'd also love to try the Ortho 80, but the results of the Retro 80 do indeed look more than convincing. I'll definitely give it a go. Thx for the recommendation...

Clear and concise review

This is a great film, in my top ten film stocks of all time. One key note to add in an otherwise lovely video, is you need to nail focus in order to get the most of the films resolution that will affect the sharpness, just as you stated it does tend to get muddy in the shadows. Another cool option for both Ferrania P30 and Rollei 80S is because of the clear base and very high silver, it can be developed as a slide reversal film if one chooses to do so.

Rollei RPX 25 is also very clear based. Sharp as a tack.

It would be interesting to see examples of your portraiture.

The base of the retro 400s is clear too. I never saw that before and i thought that a mistake happend while developing 😂

Great review. You should try out Adox CMS 20 II - also a clair base film. Love it exposed at 12 iso. Retro 80s has been on my list of films to try, so I cannot compare, but seeing this it moved up on the list of films to try. When scanning these kinds of films, it is hard to do them justice, since you arent using the whole spectrum of greytones in the camera, and the resolution of the film is higher than what the camera can resolve. With the cms 20 I get better tonallity with my dedicated film scanner (nikon) and vuescan. And even with 2x macro on an xh1 I am not able to extract all the details....

Do you have any experience developing it in Rodinal? It's the only economically viable one where i live. I've seen recommendations to use 1:25 dilution but im trying gather as much information as possible before developing myself. Great video em photos :)

Your talking head setup looks great, very clean and natural looking. Would you mind sharing how you set it up?

Are you familiar with the Adams Zone System? It was based around Adams’ preference for making all his prints on #2 grade paper which requires adjusting negative development times in accordance with the scene range from solid highlight to dark objects in shadows. The baseline calibration test was putting a portrait subject wearing white and black clothing in direct cross-lit sunlight on a clear day, shooting 4-5 sheets or rolls of film, developing each for different times then seeing which development time produced a lifelike range of tone on the #2 print which was always developed for a standard time. The scene if measured with a 1° spot meter would have a range of ten stops and that was the “normal” baseline. The same subject photographed on an overcast day would have a shorter range when metered the same way and require more development time in order to perfectly match the range of the #2 paper. Testing would be done to determine the ideal development times for scenes ranging from 8 to 12 stops difference between detailed highlights and shadows so it would be known before the shot was taken how it would need to be developed back in the darkroom. The situation is similar when digitally scanning negatives because like #2 print paper the scanner has a fixed dynamic range. Do the same baseline “normal” sunny day test to find what development time produces a full range of detail in the scans. If you encounter lighting with more contrast, such as a snow covered landscape, the normal development will result in some loss of detail in the scan so you might also do a development time test for those lighting conditions. Something else to consider is that negatives and print paper have toes and shoulders on their response curves. When exposing for print making we would expose for shadow detail just above film base + fog for the best tonality in the shadows. Your digital scanner likely has a linear response curve and better shadows may be obtained by exposing a bit more to put the shadow detail up on the straight line part of the curve. The great thing about negative film is that the dynamic range was much longer than that of the print (or scanner) so you can err on the side of overexposure by a stop or more and still produce a print with normal tonal range if the film is developed to match the range of the paper or scanner.

The shadows look blocked up on many of the images. Is this a conscious decision you made in the conversion and post? Is there actually detail on the negative? There’s usually no free lunch. For film this low grained and highly resolving, it’s usually slower than indicated. I suspect you’ll get more recorded dynamic range if you give it a stop moe light and pull development by same. The near IR sensitivity should be really nice for portraiture though. Should be a blast in studio, controlled lighting and 6X7. I use primarily Acros. Worth a shot with this in my rb67 next shopping cart with b&h.

Rollei R 80 S do very well in Foma Excel 1+1 = Kodak Xtol ? , Atomal 49 1+1 and Rodinal 1+100 at 40/50 ISO . This is for darkroom printing .

After all that mentions of portraiture, I'm surprised that you included no examples, nor any that would tend to indicate the extended red sensitivity.

Retro 80s is a really nice film, but I recomend you to try CMS 20 II. In my opinion this is the king uf B&W fotography

Sorry you didn't actually show any portrait examples, especially as to talked about it so much. Did you forget? .. or did you flash a portrait on the screen so quickly that I blinked and missed it. Please don't clip your edit so much between sentences. It's stressful and made me feeling relieved when it was finished. It's a pity because I am very interested in the film. Thanks for the video.

The film base is PET - extremely tough, it will break your camera before it tears. Gives excellent results with rodinal or caffenol semi-stand or with Ilfosol3.

I'am a darkroom printer in 120 format and I like the clear 120 base very much because you will only get a good tonal scale with clear based negatives . I have a Contax IIIA and some Kiev's that I can only use with the clear base Rollei R films for realy good results . The normal medium to dark grey based 135 films are just a lost effort and very difficult to get a good fiber print from , it is allways a kind of muddy tonal scale . So a 135 Ilford , Fuji or Kodak is not my cup of tea .

How does it do with time exposures?

Have you shot with coloured filters?

Try Adox CMS 20ii. Cheaper and better.

Not film stock, it's film.

Is it possible to expose this film on 100 ISO?

Acros 100 and Ilford Delta 100 are the most resolute film today .

Remember Technical Pan

This is an informative video, however the flashing subtitles feels like spoonfeeding statements at the viewer, also please dont cut audio so much especially mid sentence

" 10 Rolls of Film " has proven that Rollei Retro 80S and Rollei RPX 25 are the same film. Retro 80s is just pushed.

You didn't tell me a lot I didn't know, and I don't love your face talking at me. But, you made a good video, I can't not give that a thumbs up.

Please don’t flash titles in front of your face while you’re speaking: it’s jarring and extremely distracting. It makes this video nearly unwatchable. Note: Retro 80S is a repackaged Agfa Aviphot Pan 80 , FWIW.