As I was a goin' over, the far-famed Analogue Land
I met with Captain Filmy, who his Wonderpoints was countin'
I first produced my camera and then I stuck a roll in
I said: "Stand and deliver
He laughed: "With this stuff you'll be strugglin'

Mush-a ring dum-a do dum-a da
Watch for the winding-oh
It's gonna cost you-oh
There's Washi in the jar...

Here's one of those off-the-wall films the Wondies bring to the party like a blast from your head-banging past.

But it comes with a hangover or two, like the highwayman betrayed by his lover in the iconic Thin Lizzy track which is believed to have its origins in the 18th Century, first popularised in the 1960s by iconic Irish folk ensemble The Dubliners.

What lets it down is the film is stiff as you load it up and wind the first few frames on and even worse when you rewind it.

My old shooting match barely coped with winding it on between shots or back in when I guessed it was finished.

And it's a reversal film. That means reversing nearly twice as many beer tokens out of your bank account to get it developed.

If you're waiting for an alibi, it does clearly say it's a reversal film, experimental, very stiff, don't use in a sensitive or fragile camera etc on the listing.

But the boys weren't exactly back in town when I got the scans back.

It's not so much everything's backwards - as in reversal film, (see above...).

It's more like zero latitude, not much in the way of tones and more noise than Thin Lizzy in their heyday.

You can probably guess which way this one's going.

So it's the first-ever one star from this old rocker.

First of all, Washi are not joking when they say this film is not going to be usable in an automatic camera, it barely advances through my Yashica FX3 due to the resistance from the thickness. In Addition this film has a very high contrast and ideally on a cloudy day I feel a rating of ISO 64 would give you better results than ISO 100, and on sunny days ISO 160 or a red filter might keep the highlights under control. That being said, all the pain and challenges of Washi R are worth it for having prints right out of camera. I wish they made it in 120 though. It's a 5 star end result but the struggles shooting it and the feeling that I might break my camera shooting it makes it a hard thing to recommend. It's really a question of how much do you want the look of old school photobooths and if the challenges mentioned above are worth it.