Can I get 120 roll colour film in Tirana?

Hi I don’t know this suggestion will help you or not, but I give it a try.

Since you are not far from Italy, why not mail order Fuji Pro400H from Italy? I have tried it in 2002 when I went to Italy. Although I ended up ordering from Germany, I corresponded with this place in the Republic of San Marino (near Rimini, Italy).

sanmarinophoto.com

“Films” in Italian is pellicole. They are selling Fuji NPH400 in 120 there. I corresponded with them in English, so you can contact them first whether they will send your film to you. On that trip I was shooting 35mm and 120, so I knew they were carrying 120.

Tomoko

Hi Ben
you can order through Art Foto, opposite the Grand Hotel, they will then get it from Turkey, but it takes a while,usually a couple of weeks, the guy to talk to is called Fatmir. Not sure about Tirana, you should ask Bevis Fusha, he’s on Lightstalkers.
Mail ordering from anywhere else is a problem as the postal system doesn’t really work. You can get stuff sent by Fed Ex, but just make sure they don’t send via Belgrade, if they do, Belgrade Fed Ex will hold it for up to three weeks before sending it on to Kosovo, inter Balkan politics and all that. By the way, depending on your political persuasion, you can put Kosovo as your location…..if you want.

forgot to mention, you can definitely get 120 film in Belgrade.

ben,the mini-bus drivers coming from belgrade will bring packages for a small consideration.you just have to wait for for the bus in prishtina.also you could cultivate a contact with o.s.c.e.,they are running between belgrade and kosovo all the time.send me a p.m. if these options are useful to you and maybe i can sort this end out.

Andrew’s advice is very good. You should contact Bevis, he is a great resource on everything photographic in Tirana. I spent several months in Tirana and northern Albania this year doing a documentary project and luckily I brought all the film I would need with some extra, because it would have been impossible to get more in Albania.

Fuji of any sort is impossible to get. I shoot Neopan films, trad. black and white, and they are not to be found. Fuji color film is also non-existent. This, despite the FUJI logo all over the photoshops there. Most film I found was the chinese rebranded type, of which the description “dubious quality” would be a compliment.

I would venture a guess that there isn’t any 120 film to be bought in the entire country. Digital is king.

Watch yourself there, be careful. It is not a dangerous place. But take care of your bags on public transport, and for the love of god, look both ways before you cross the road. Even on one-way roads.

By the way, you will probably hear people commenting on the Sunday Times article by AA Gill. It has the whole country pissed off. You can find it here.

When you go to Albania ask for the passport stamps to be made on a separate piece of paper, not in your passport. The UNMIK guys at Morine will do this no problem. The Albanian border control might require a little more talking to get this accomplished. This will simplify things if you decide to go to Serbia. If they see that you traveled between Kosovo and Albania, it has a tendency to complicate things. I got kicked off the bus at the Serbian border when they saw this:

hey, man, not all Chinese film is bad!

long ago, Albania was China’s satellite in Eastern Europe, after the Albanians broke with the USSR.

(OK, that’s irrelevant!)

back to the issue at hand: both LUCKY and ERA brand Chinese films are OK. I’ve shot the ERA black-and-white and the LUCKY color C-41.

The LUCKY C-41 is about what you would expect; unless you’re really paying a premium for a certain look, C-41 is C-41. It was about on par with Konica or the old Agfa C-41 stuff. a bit thin film base, but scanned and printed decently.

The ERA B+W was actually quite nice in a way. I shot a couple rolls of the ASA 100 and it had nice tonal qualities. Definitely wasn’t as crisp and sharp in the grain as Tri-X or HP-5 but you wouldn’t expect it to be.

Now of course any film found in a Tirana shop may been (very) improperly stored and subjected to high temperatures, humidity, etc. so results will vary. but it wouldn’t hurt to test a roll if you’re running out, and see if it will work for you.

And yes, you can get 120 film in Belgrade. It’s only a three hour drive each way. You could even have stuff shipped there, and go up for the weekend.

And Andrew’s right - I’d be careful referring to Pristina (which, BTW, is the Serbian preferred spelling and still internationally accepted, and yet you use the Kosovar preferred Prishtina?) as being in “Serbia” as opposed to “Kosovo.” but then you do call it “Kosova” - Kosovar preferred—so I guess there’s something for everyone.

BTW Kosovo was never directly part of “Serbia” in the sense that it and Vojvodina were “Autonomous Provinces Of Serbia.” They both had their own votes on the rotating presidency of post-Tito socialist Yugoslavia, therefore equating them in this way with the full republics. The Serbs claimed it through history and ethnicity (the same way they claimed the areas now called Republika Srbska in Bosnia and the Krajina areas in Croatia) but not as being politically or administratively part of Serbia proper. Subtle distinctions but important ones.

And actually, who inherits the official sovereignty at this moment?!? The ceasefire of 1999 and UN protectorate established by it was by arrangement with the “Federal Republic Of Yugoslavia” which then became for a while “Serbia And Montenegro” and now that Montenegro, too, has voted for independence, are there still formal federal structures of any kind in Belgrade or were they dissolved completely and replaced entirely by the Serbian structures?

This was a silly point in a federal country down to two units, but the distinction remained. With the complete and utter end of the federal structure, i suppose there must be a clause in that which stated that Serbia inherits most former functions of the federal government, including adherence to treaties and agreements with other states….

don’t we all love the Balkans???

This is really a question out of curiosity about the area. When I looked at the map yesterday, I noticed that there are a few ferry lines between Tirana (really a port called Durres) and Italy. The shortest line appears to be going to Brindisi. The other line goes to Bari. Bear in mind that my map is from the Hammond International City Atlas Europe (the publisher is GeoGraphic Publishers in Germany and the edition is 2005/2006). I wonder how practical it would be for Frank to hop on one of these ferries to go across to Italy and receive a package of fresh film from whomever he wants to order from.

those ferries are overnight affairs. i took the boat from Split in Croatia to Ancona in Italy and while it was very comfortable (parked my car, ate a good dinner, drank a bottle of wine, and slept in my cabin) it was neither fast nor cheap.

From Pristina, you are three/four hours from Belgrade, therefore around eight/nine hours from Budapest, and twelve hours from Vienna.

Skopje is one hour way, Sofia, Bulgaria and Thessaloniki, Greece, are therefore both around five-six hours. Istanbul is 900 miles from Pristina, you can do much of it at high speed across the Thracian plain. Interestingly it is only a thousand miles to Paris from Pristina!

Getting to the Adriatic coast or Sarajevo, however, takes at least eight or ten hours no matter how you do it because of the mountains.

The fastest overland highway route to Western Europe is therefore through Belgrade and Budapest. If you are driving with people who don’t want to go through Serbia, then the Adriatic ferries are a good idea.

Depending on your ultimate destination, remember that French and Italian expressways cost a fortune in tolls, whereas the German autobahn is free. You can literally save several hundred dollars/euros across Europe if you take the smaller, slower roads. Take them at night and you can go pretty fast anyway.

check out the www.viamichelin.com—this is a mapquest for europe, and it’s great! plug in Pristina to Paris, see what happens!

Alan, you are obviously experienced in these things, and I am sure with a bed and a car and everything, it must be expensive to ride a ferry, but I found an inexpensive rate on this Greek ferry operating between Bari and Durres.

www.hellas-ferries.gr

You need to be willing to be seated on the Pullman seat without a car. I assume the return fare to be a round-trip fare.

Ok, thanks everyone for your suggestions and comments. I’ve returned to PriSTina, KosovO (I will not waste my time here discussing what would be the politically correct spelling, but I guess Alan has a point about coherency), to develop my film and will thus go up to Belgrade in search for film.

Ok, thanks everyone for your suggestions and comments. I’ve returned to PriSTina, KosovO (I will not waste my time here discussing what would be the politically correct spelling, but I guess Alan has a point about coherency), to develop my film and will thus go up to Belgrade in search for film.

Does anyone know any labs in Belgrade they can recommend for buying both colour roll film and 35mm (pref. Fuji Pro 400H?)