A New Monster's in Town - Jekyll & Hyde from the Film Photography Project

It's spooky season and time to shoot FPP monster film!

The Film Photography Project has a new spooky film out for 2024, Jekyll & Hyde!

This is a 100 ISO black and white film akin to Tasma NK-2, what the FPP call a ‘cult-favorite’.

One roll comes with 24 exposures on a polyester base promising precision and contrast.

I can attest to how the film delivers on this, after developing it in 510-pyro for 12 minutes at a 1:100 dilution.

It’s fabulous!!

It’s also been a hot minute since I’ve shot/been into black and white film. This year has been a colorful one for me, especially with the choice of Kodak Gold for my Frugal Film Project 2024.

Disclaimer: The FPP sent me this film to test out. No content is sponsored though and I was not paid anything or influenced to say anything positive about anything.

ALSO - there was a spelling change on Jekyll, the first batch was sent with the Jeckyll spelling but they changed this after to Jekyll. :)

Jekyll & Hyde went straight into the Nikon FM2n, my favorite new SLR and I headed off to the great unknown of New Hampshire to find interesting subject matter. It didn’t disappoint!

One thing I’d like to say about New Hampshire…it’s surprising.

I grew up in the state from the age of 10. Before then (and after high school) I was a good ol’ mass-hole in the making). Growing up in this place, I always thought it was SO boring and that I needed to escape at the first chance! Hit the big cities, live large, etc., etc.

Yet, the more I explore this state, the more I find amazing places to photograph that make me wonder, how much have I missed, what else is out there?

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE being able to walk about my front door, hit the street, see fellow city dwellers, and reach a public transport system within 10 minutes…something NH doesn’t have. But it’s slowly making up for this the more I explore it in my microadventures with film cameras.

SO…with Jekyll and Hyde loaded into my camera, I found a few lovely autumnal scenes including the popular straw people…

The Jekyll & Hyde theme is a reference to the book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde written by Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s a tale of dual natures and science experiments in London during the Victorian era.

I found this article discussing various analyses of Stevenson’s work quite interesting…read it here.

The FPP mentions this film is akin to Tasma NK-2 and I didn’t find this on the massive dev chart for 510 pyro. It’s there for other developers though.

So, I had to estimate the dev time based on an average of other developers.

12 minutes seemed about right.

And the negatives came out ok!

I’m certainly not an expert with chemistry and film results…don’t start talking to me about density because I’ll just say, ‘Yeah, it looks alright enough!’. ;p

Beyond the film feeling ‘thin’, I can’t say much about if 12 minutes was perfect, but I’m happy with how everything came out so that’s good enough for me!

Sooooo…if you are in a spooky mood this October and want a fun film to shoot for Halloween, I can recommend this one!

There’s also Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein, and a few others available from the FPP.

Check ‘em out here!

Now, I can’t leave this post without saying something about the selection of monster films from the FPP and how it seems very much like a ‘boy’s club’ so to speak. So, for 2025, I’d love to see a lady-monster out there in the collection. There are quite a few to choose from including: The Wicked Witch of the West, Carmilla, Scylla and Charybdis, The Grand High Witch, MEDUSA, etc.

If you like to watch YouTube, I also did a video on this film here where you can see even more photos!

That’s it for this week, let me know if you have shot any of the monster films below and what you liked or didn’t like about them. What did you shoot with them?

Until next time…

Stay spooky,

~M