Rollei Retro 80S

Let's have a look at Rollei Retro 80S, a contrasty black and white film sold by Rollei, which is part of whatever remains of Agfa. Although Agfa's website doesn't explicitly mention Rollei 80s the film is apparently derived from their range of aerial surveillance film, with extended infrared sensitivity so that it penetrates atmospheric haze.

It's available in two speeds, ISO 80 and ISO 400. I bought some ISO 80 and shot it at ISO 80 in Prague, which is a retro place. I'm surprised that anyone in 2020 still makes aerial surveillance film, but perhaps the Croatian Air Force has a bunch of reconnaissance MiG-21s that it continues to use because they work and they're cheap.

Why is it called retro film? I'm not sure. It feels like a lith-type film, with very high contrast. As a result if you meter for the shadows the overcast sky blows out, which resembles the look of old-fashioned orthochromatic film. Perhaps that's why it's called retro.

The Croatian Air Force still flies the MiG-21, by the way. The aircraft was introduced into Soviet service in the late 1950s, but despite the basic design being more than half a century old it's still in service throughout Africa and the Far East because it can cover a lot of airspace quickly and spare parts are widely available. China built a reverse-engineered copy called the J-7, which is also still in service.

What was the MiG-21 like? Visually it resembled the English Electric Lightning, but on an operational level it was more versatile. The Lighting was designed to intercept Soviet bombers coming over the North Sea, so it had a excellent rate of climb and high top speed. On the downside the range was poor and it had a weak payload of just two missiles.

English Electric eventually added more fuel tanks, and fitted bombs and rocket pods for ground attack, but the Lightning was overkill as a ground attack aircraft. The MiG-21 had a similar evolution, from interceptor to multi-role aircraft, but it had a greater range and payload than the Lighting and a more powerful radar, so it remained in service a lot longer.

By modern standards it has a massive radar signature and limited space for internal avionics, and I imagine that it's not very environmentally friendly, but it's still unusually fast. Modern fighters prioritise mission flexibility over speed, but the MiG-21 was designed when the world's air forces wanted something that could go at mach 2+.

I'm digressing here. Orthochromatic film is hypersensitive to the colour blue, which means that blue skies tend to register as pure white. That's why 19th-century photographs often appear overcast even when there are sharp shadows from the sun. Orthochromatic film can't distinguish between white clouds and blue sky.

SMEG has a history dating back to 1948 - it's an Italian company, the name stands for "Smalterie Metallurgiche Emiliane Guastalla".

And unless you're over the age of forty you probably don't remember Red Dwarf. But still, it's an unfortunate name.

Did I like Rollei 80s? Erm. At ISO 80 the negatives were very thin, and as with other lith films it's a fragile dust magnet, so I had to spend a lot of time getting rid of white dust spots on the scan.

On the positive side it has deep, deep blacks that resemble a Bela Tarr film. It can also apparently be used as a near-infrared film, but I didn't try this. I would have had to shoot blind through an infrared filter, and I'm not sure about the metering. Perhaps another day. If you're a member of the Croatian Air Force and you regularly use this film, and you're prepared to share exposure tips, please get in touch via the comments.

What's it like up close? There's very little grain, and it benefits from sympathetic sharpening.

Here's a 100% crop, and bear in mind that my Epson V500 desktop scanner is (a) antiquated (b) not a dedicated film scanner. My guess is that a really good scanner would resolve the Mercedes' numberplate. Note that even after sharpening far more heavily than I would have done with a digital photo, the grain is still almost unnoticeable.

80S and 400S are available in 35mm and 120, and unlike the range of Adox films - which I have tried before, and liked - they seem to be widely in stock, at least here in the UK.

Development? Ordinarily I develop black and white film myself, with R09 / Rodinal. Unfortunately the first two rolls I tried to develop came out completely transparent, so I think at this point my Rodinal has expired. What was on those two rolls? One of them had a bunch of photos of Prague's largest panelak, viz the following image, but in black and white:

The other was shot when I went off to see Nights of Cabiria and the BFI Sound Bank. I sent the third roll off to a leading British photo development company that rhymes with Bleak Pillaging, which is why it has survived whereas the other two rolls are gone.

Do I have any more thoughts about Rollei 80s? My hunch is that the 400-speed version would be good in a Holga, with a red filter stuck on the front. All the images in this page were shot with a Canon 50E using a 100mm f/2 lens, which I have been using a lot recently because I feel sorry for it - the 85mm f/1.8 overshadows it, but it remains on sale, so obviously some people like it.

The lens has a bit of barrel distortion and at f/2 there's noticeable purple fringing, and without image stabilisation I find that I have to keep reminding myself not to shoot at 1/60th, but on the whole I like it. It's compact, silent, and on a full-frame camera it's just wide enough to use as a walk-around lens.

MRE Menu 19: Beef Patty, Jalapeno Pepper Jack

Let's have a look at MRE Menu 19: Beef Patty, Jalapeno Pepper Jack (Steak Haché au Fromage Pimenté). It's one of those things that's better in theory than practice. The beef patty was apparently introduced in 2013 and is the closest thing in the MRE line-up to a hamburger.

As mentioned passim MREs are pre-packaged "meals, ready-to-eat" invented for the US Armed Forces in the early 1980s and revised continuously since then. There are around two dozen different menus but they taste very similar. There are vegetarian options; I've tried a couple, including tuna and vegetable pasta.

For civilian use MREs are a novelty. They are designed to last for around five years in cool conditions, much longer refrigerated, but they're too bulky to form the basis of a long-term food store. They're also too large for hiking and generate a lot of plastic waste. Purely as food they're too expensive. They're novelties, but what's wrong with that?

Menu 19 is almost stereotypically American. It's essentially a chunk of beef with a big cookie and some M and Ms, plus a cup of coffee. Most MREs are designed so that the main meal can be eaten in several different ways but Menu 19 is unusually straightforward, although it makes up for it with a lot of sauces.

From left to right the beef patty, some mustard, and a big cookie. 

Plus M and Ms, a couple of tortillas, ketchup, and cherry cobbler. 

And the typical accessories - coffee instant type II, sugar, creamer, salt, matches, a spoon, a towel, gum - plus an orange drink and, intriguingly, cheese spread with bacon.

I've tried the cherry cobbler before, on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. I was hallucinating from dehydration at the time. My pee was black! But I didn't die, and that was because the cherry cobbler had some moisture. It's the fruit filling from a cherry crumble, minus the crumble. It looks horrible but it tastes great:

Before I tried anything else I decided to heat up the main meal, which is a small chunk of processed meat. I imagined that I was preparing space food:

While the flameless ration heater fizzed away I made some coffee. As always it gives me a mental image of a canteen in a Post Office depot, where the walls are breezeblocks painted white with health and safety posters.

It tastes "hard" rather than "smooth". Truth be told there's nothing really wrong with it; imagine the cheapest instant coffee you can get. The provided quantities are perfect for a single cup but would be very weak in an army canteen. It's odd that they don't include more coffee, but perhaps US soldiers have access to coffee elsewhere.

Next I munched on the M and Ms, which I have to call "M and Ms" because the Blogger platform doesn't render ampersands properly.

They are, unsurprisingly, regular M and Ms. They're not special army M and Ms with extra vitamins or anything.

At this point I decided to dive into the main meal. As mentioned up the page MREs are generally designed so that you can do a little bit of creative cooking, but in the absence of crackers there is only one way to prepare Menu 19. A beef patty covered in cheese, wrapped in a tortilla. The patty isn't the most visually appealing food I have ever seen:

The simulation of griddled beef is surprisingly good, but it's so obviously not a piece of griddled beef that it looks terrible. In theory I could have spread the cheese onto the tortillas and had cheese tortillas, but what would I have done with the piece of beef? It's only a few bites big. I ended up making some quote burgers unquote:

The meat was just tasteless food mass. It would have benefited from some kind of burger sauce; in the end I saved the ketchup and mustard for later. The cheese was by far the best-tasting and indeed only-tasting element of the main meal.

The tortillas actually smell quite nice straight from the packet, but they taste floury and dry. I understand that some versions of Menu 19 have wheat bread instead of tortillas; why not a burger bun? Other MREs have burger buns.

I finished off the meal with the cookie, which was dry and crumbly but perfectly fine. The Beverage Base Orange Type III was subtler and less chalky than I expected:

I mean, it's still not good, it's just not as bad as I expected. It's just cheap orange squash. After scoffing the above I was left with some gum, a moist towelette - perhaps the COVID crisis will give me something to do with the moist towelettes I have amassed - and some iodised salt, which I keep to one side to sprinkle on wounds. And of course I was left with another MRE spoon. They're surprisingly sturdy. I now have one for every room in the house, including the toilet, for reasons I will not divulge.

Is that it? Menu 19 is disappointing. The main element is a paltry bit of beef. Even if it was terrific it would still be just a small chunk of meat. The big problem is that it's mostly sugary sweets with an inflexible main meal. Just adding crackers and replacing the M and Ms with some kind of savoury snack - and replacing the tomato sauce and mustard with oniony burger sauce - would have expanded the creative potential immensely.

Ultimately Menu 19 just raises the question of why there isn't a proper MRE hamburger. There's an MRE pizza, but no hamburger. Is the US government worried about stereotyping? Who knows.