Rollei Infrared 400 on a 30.5 m bulk roll is an infrared black-and-white film for people who shoot IR in series rather than one roll a year. One roll gives about 18 cassettes of 36 exposures, and you can wind short cassettes for a specific shoot: infrared landscape usually takes bracketing and tests, and a bulk roll makes them far cheaper.

How the film works

It is a super-panchromatic emulsion with extended sensitivity into the red and near infrared. Without a filter it behaves like a contrasty ordinary ISO 400 black-and-white film. With an IR filter around 715–720 nm you get the effect people buy it for: pale, almost white foliage, a dark sky, translucent clouds and soft, porcelain skin in a portrait.

What to know when loading

The film sits on a thin clear polyester base, and a clear base pipes light along the strip. So load the roll into the bulk loader and wind the cassettes in complete darkness, and load and unload the camera in shade, never in bright sun. The base itself is very strong, so if a cassette winds stiffly, do not force it — check the strip has not skewed. I use a Watson Model 100; treat the first 2–3 frames of each cassette as leader.

What it suits

Sunlit landscape and foliage first of all. Then architecture against the sky, water, clouds and experimental portraits. The IR effect weakens on an overcast day, so the best frames come on a clear day with a high sun.

Exposure

Behind a dense IR filter an ordinary meter does not see what the film sees, so I recommend a tripod, bracketing over several stops and notes on the light and filter for each frame. A dark filter makes an SLR viewfinder nearly opaque: compose before you screw it on.

Processing is ordinary black-and-white; load the tank in complete darkness. You can have it developed and scanned in my lab. The same film in a factory cassette: Rollei Infrared 400 135/36.

Specification

  • Format: 135 (35 mm), 30.5 m bulk roll
  • Speed: ISO 400 without a filter
  • Type: black-and-white negative, near-infrared sensitive
  • Base: clear polyester
  • Yield: about 18 cassettes of 36 exposures
  • Process: standard black-and-white