In Search of Black & White, Appendix 1 – Svema Foto and Derev Pan films from Ukraine

When I learned about Svema Film on a recent post here on 35mmc, I was intrigued enough to try some out.  Svema is a Ukrainian film stock manufactured in a former Soviet plant, and comes in two lines: Svema Foto and Derev Pan, both in 100, 200 and 400 ISO’s.  Svema films are marketed in the US by the Film Photography Project.  I thought if all went well it might present an opportunity to add to my 35mmc B&W survey.  I was also happy to send some of my film dollars to Ukraine!

Note:  this post is organized by ascending ISO’s, which means jumping around in time a bit as I loaded these films based on the conditions on any given day or location.

We’ll start with one of my favorites, Svema Foto 100.  I shot some on a day when I woke up to a gorgeous snowfall, and couldn’t resist doing some photos of trees and shrubs covered with a thick coating of soft fresh snow, including this massive field beech (we call it the Game of Thrones tree) that I shot just as the wind blew some snow off the upper branches.

This shot is from a few hours later after much of the snow had blown off the upper branches of the beech and the sun was emerging from the clouds.  Not a great shot, but I include it here with the note that Svema Foto 100 is known for being more sensitive on the red end of the spectrum and less sensitive on the blue, which can lead to dramatic skies when conditions are right.  Here I think I took it a step further and shot with a red filter, and the sky is almost black.

I also tried out Svema Foto 100 on my expedition to Coney Island for the 2026 Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day.

I really like Svema Foto 100’s combination of fine grain, deep blacks and strong contrast.  Those first two rolls made me keen to try more!  If I had a wish, it would be that it came in 36 exposure rolls; at the moment I only see it available in 24 exposures & 100 foot rolls for bulk loading.

I shot my first roll of Derev Pan 100 on a family trip to Montreal.  The stock looks good and Montreal is a beautiful city, but it was bitter cold and people were in a hurry to get indoors, so everything I shot that day has a bit of a moody distant feel…

My favorite photo of the day is this shot of woman through the window of a cool Indian coffee shop. I love it for the subtle mood, the lovely tonal range & deep blacks, the layers and depth, including in the reflections in the window, both framing and obscuring the people in the warm cafe.

I also had some Derev Pan 100 loaded a couple of weeks later on a warmer day when I took a long walk from Lower Manhattan up through the Lower East Side.  I ran into a couple of very nice photographers, Mirro & Dan on the corner of Canal Street.  Mirro, who has a dark green Leica M11, noticed my M3 and we started chatting cameras, and we grabbed some photos of each other.

Dan, a professional television Director of Photography, has a late model digital Hasselblad, which I don’t recall seeing out in the wild.  We had a nice chat; I gawked at his camera and he mused about the differences between shooting film & digital.  Despite his years of experience shooting video professionally, Dan is relatively new to shooting street photography.

He was intrigued by my 60+ year old analog kit, so I let him take a shot of me with the M3.

I think it came out well!  I really like both Svema Foto 100, which might be a little finer grained and higher contrast, while Derev Pan 100 might be slightly warmer/softer and have more subtle gradations in the mid-tones.  But it’s fine margins and I would happily shoot more of both!

The first time I tried Svema Foto 200 I was testing a ‘new’  (to me) 1957 Summarit 50mm 1.5.   I didn’t get anything all that memorable on that first roll.  This shot, around the corner from the camera store looking toward a pre Xmas Macy’s, is probably the best of the lot.

My second roll of Svema Foto 200, was later on the day I met Mirro and Dan.  Heading north into the East Village, I spotted an interesting character selling esoteric books outside of Cooper Union.  Fittingly, he calls himself “Bookman.”

I found the framing of this shot, with Bookman 100% in the bottom half of the image, surprising when it came back from the lab, as I don’t remember framing it that way.  Easy to crop, but I decided to leave it as shot for the post.  In my early days with the Summarit, I think I might be subconsciously framing to include more background  because of its reputation for unusual bokeh.  We’ll see more more of that as the late afternoon sun goes down along with the f stops.

Bookman was very accommodating.  He let me take a handful of shots and even gave me some direction, suggesting I stand on a bus stop bench for higher angle.

Next I made my way over to Tompkins Square Park and ran into Maikeru and Donate, a couple of guys from the Bronx spending the afternoon in the East Village.

This portrait of Maikeru became an instant favorite when I got it back from the lab, and is probably one of my best street portraits since I started shooting them about six months ago.  When I shared the shots with Maikeru, his verdict was that “They came out dope!”

I think this shot of Donate is pretty cool too.  These shots have a bit of a soft glow that I like very much, not to mention the bokeh which is really starting to pop in lower light, here at f4.  Maybe I’ve finally stumbled onto the famous Leica glow?   This combination of the Summarit 1.5 + Svema Foto 200 make me want to shoot more with both!

It was getting pretty late in the afternoon when I loaded my last roll of the day, Derev Pan 200.  On the park bench while I was reloading I overheard two young women having a funny/fun conversation that young dreamers have.  One of them would become a famous author and the other would be her biographer, but not let her read the biography while she was alive.  I asked if I could take their dust jacket photos and we had a laugh.

The light was starting to fade pretty fast, so it was nice to have the extra stop(s) on the Summarit, which feels like a very promising portrait lens that is flattering and a bit dreamy.

Made for Leica in the 1950’s in the UK by Taylor Hobson, the Summarit 1.5 is famous (infamous?) for its quirky bokeh and a strongly vintage feel with lower contrast and is perhaps a bit softer than modern lenses.  The bokeh on this two shot going wide open at f1.5 is getting a bit wild, almost a vortex around the center of the frame, not to mention those triangular highlights frame left!

I guess it has that reputation for good reasons — it has enough personality to be the life of the party, especially when the lights get low.   Perhaps a post comparing it to other Leica 50mms might be in our future…

Tompkins Square Park had a large pile of discarded Christmas trees that served as a climbing environment for the neighborhood children.

Running about on a giant pile of discarded Christmas trees feels a little on the margins of modern safety standards, but the kids were having a blast.  In the dusky light, they looked a bit elfin appearing and disappearing amongst deep dark branches, which gave these shots a bit of a magical feel to me.

I’m not sure my comparison between the 200 ISO’s feels like a level playing field — the light was pretty low by the time I got shooting with Derev Pan 200 and might have a little less lustre/glow in the highlights as a result.  But they both feel pretty cool, but Svema Foto 200 feels kind of special, if those portraits in the park are any indication.

I tried some Svema Foto 400 on an outing to the Museum of Modern Art.

And the next morning I got a shot of some competing photo opportunities on the Brooklyn waterfront.

At box speed, Svema Foto 400 feels a bit grainy and maybe a bit low contrast.  The results I got with Derev Pan 400 are more to my taste.

I like the deep blacks on these images.  They also have a healthy amount of grain, and feel a little more ‘classic,’ perhaps in the same general zip code as Tri-X or HP5.

I also like the look of the Summarit in low light, which definitely has a vintage ‘lost film’ feel.  This shot of Sixth Avenue feels like it could have been taken 40 or 50 years ago.

As chronicled on 35mmc, my first time out with those films was shooting a live performance by the dissident Russian punk band Pussy Riot.  It seemed meaningful to shoot that particular concert on a film made in Ukraine, and on Derev Pan 400 pushed two stops I managed to get a very nice portrait of Nadya Tolokonnikova, the singer and one of the founders and leaders of the global feminist resistance collective, Pussy Riot.

One cautionary note, in the spirit of full transparency, the roll of Derev Pan 400 I shot at the Pussy Riot concert had some kind of flaw that looked to my untrained eye like a band of abrasion and some pressure spots on the base layer.  It was a mild distraction on a good bit of the roll that receded a bit after I fine tuned exposure in LIghtroom, but rendered a handful of shots, like this one, unusable.

I’m not sure where or how that happened on the journey from Ukraine to this scan, so I reached out to the Film Photography Project to get their view.  Michael Raso, the founder/owner, had the following response:  “I took a long look at the Derev Pan 400 photos featuring the “band” you mentioned, and it’s hard to tell what could have caused the issue. While I understand your take-away is that there must be an issue with the emulsion, I can only reiterate that the film is produced in batches from master rolls and this is the first time we’ve been contacted about coating or emulsion issues. To be frank, my take-away is that this is likely a developing / chemistry issue.”

I may run those negatives by the lab someday, but I don’t think this will scare me off of using either Svema Foto or Derev Pan stocks going forward.

Admittedly, when my sample is only one or two rolls of a given film stock, a lot can depend on intangible factors on the day(s) I’m out shooting.  It’s hard to fall in love with anything I shoot on a day that I’m not feeling it, and it’s easy to fall in love with things I shoot when I’m in that elusive creative flow state.  While it was cold and overcast the day I walked from Lower Manhattan to the East Village, it ended up being full of warmth and connection with people everywhere I met, which I think you can see and feel in the photos.

On the way home after Tompkins Square Park, I ran into Mirro and Dan again, this time shooting on East Houston Street taking shots of Katz’s Deli in the last light of the day.  It’s interesting to see how digital shooters hold their cameras compared to how I hold my rangefinder  when taking a shot. We should definitely do a photowalk one of these days!

The people I met that day all thought it was cool when I told them I was shooting a Ukrainian film, and I am pretty impressed with both the Svema Foto and Derev Pan films, and have already ordered some more!

Go Ukraine!

Share this post: