'Film Washi' films

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FILM WASHI

Founded in 2013 by Lomig Perrotin in a closet of his Parisian flat, and then in the family garage in Saint-Nazaire, Film Washi grew up while staying a one-man-business. The company’s facilities are now located in decommissioned French Army containers, somewhere in Britanny.

The company’s ethos is based on values of innovation, simplicity and ecology. The adopted processes link it to the Maker and DIY movements: recycling takes an important part in the making of films, and many production tools (including 120 rollers, 135-cartridge loader, or IR glasses) have been made out of recycled parts.

With more than 110.000 films sold since it was created, Film Washi stays a relatively minor player on the analog photography market. It does not try to compete against major film makers, but to complement them instead, offering photographers a different, novel approach to analogue photography.

Washi - Z

400 ISO 24 exposures

£9.50

Originally coated for aerial vegetation mapping, "Z" is a near infrared sensitive film, offering nice contrast and green shades separation.

A pretty unique stock, the Washi Film Z is a 400 ISO, near infrared sensitive film. This makes it excellent for landscape photography with its striking contrast, even in cloudy weather conditions. It’s possible to exaggerate the infrared effect [dark sky and highlight red and green] using a red filter.

Non DX coded

Film Washi introduced itself as the world’s smallest film company. Launched in 2013 and based in Brittany, France, 'Film Washi' specialises in handcrafted film stocks and industrial film conversion. 

These films are coated by machines in other factories but are not made for regular photography. They may have been designed for exposition through automatic machines, like motion picture sound or leader film, or even not intended for visible light, like X-ray films. Some other are reserved to governmental or military uses, like surveillance films. However, these films can be hacked from their intended use for artistic or fun purposes. That is why Film Washi converts them to standard formats to make them usable in classic cameras.

Read more about the company here.

Washi - X

100 ISO maskless colour film

£15.99

"X" is a technical film with no orange mask that gives beautiful warm toned and highly saturated pictures which recall the first colour negative film of the 40’s & 50’s. It also offer the possibility to process it in both C41 (negative) or E6 (slide) process.

These films are coated by machines in other factories but are not made for regular photography. They may have been designed for exposition through automatic machines, like motion picture sound or leader film, or even not intended for visible light, like X-ray films. Some other are reserved to governmental or military uses, like surveillance films. However, these films can be hacked from their intended use for artistic or fun purposes. That is why Film Washi converts them to standard formats to make them usable in classic cameras.

WASHI 'F' 120mm

£9.99

100 ISO

Film "F" is a special X-ray film used for mass lung disease diagnose and it is the first time such film is made available in 135. It is a truly a unique film that offer, being coated without anti-halation layer, a high diffusion effect and beautiful grain.

Read more about the company here.

Film Washi was born with film "W": a black and white hancrafted film that is hand-coated on a traditional Japanese paper known as Washi. Inspired by the paper negatives of Henry Fox-Talbot (1841, Calotype) and the early Eastman paper rolls (1884, Translucene), its goal is to obtain a strong graphical effect on a way that may evoke the æsthetics of the early XXth century pictorialism, and to do so directly on the negative. Both very strong and transparent, this paper brings its fibrous texture to the negatives, thus making the physical film base a core part of the picture.

Besides this artisanal activity, Film Washi offers specialty films as well, which were made in other factories but reserved to a limited field of technical applications. These may be well-known media, such as X-ray films used in radiography, but whose photographic use is very limited, or other, more confidential products. Film Washi converts these films to standard photographic formats, in order to allow them to be used in normal cameras.

Finally, Film Washi offers its professional or individual clients a possibility to order specific, custom works.