ASA Analog: Mystery AZOPAN PS-21 Film

Azopan PS-21

To start off my blog postings of 2017, here is a quick but fascinating "found film" post.

Several years ago, when visiting Romania, I picked up another old Soviet camera, a FED 2 (review coming soon). I found, to my surprise, that the previous owner had left an exposed roll of film in the camera. This was a film like no other, it wasn't Kodak, Ilford, Agfa, or any of the other popular brands, it was Azopan PS-21.

Azopan is a film which is difficult to find any solid history on, but with some research I found that Azopan was made in Romania by Azomures, Târgu Mureș, using locally produced materials. Unfortunately, the company ceased producing film stocks around 10-15 years ago, due to the increased popularity of digital photography. When they were producing film though, they made both black and white, and colour film stocks, which from my understanding, were of a high quality and low grain.

What is interesting about this film roll, is that it is labelled as ASA/DIN*, not the current ISO system, so that means it was produced sometime in the 1980's, maybe before? There is no expiry date on the film, so I can't identify exactly how old it is. But, there could be the slight possibility that it could contain images of the Romanian revolution in 1989, the downfall of Ceausescu, the breakup of the USSR... or just hazy images of someone's cat from 2005.

Either way, whatever the film contains, it should be fascinating to find out. I plan to take it in for development when I have a few more rolls of film which also need to be developed.

I'll make another post when I have more news!

*ASA/DIN was the standard for film speed up until around 1980, but after the growth of digital in the early 2000's, ISO became the favoured system used to determine film speed.