Anyone Want Return of Panatomic X?

And some of my B+F measures are 0.3 which means I have about 0.05 fog!

 

I would definitely stock up on one or two hundred foot rolls...

 

Simple reality check for everyone: a minimum production run would equate to about 30000 36-exposure rolls of 35mm & would have to be sold within 2 years of coating. Would those of you clamouring for FX be willing to buy and use that much film on an ongoing basis (no stockpiling!) or are we talking about 2-3 rolls a year level of usage?

Cost of coating the batch would likely be 6 figures. Persuading Adox to make something not unlike APX25 on their smaller coater might be more realistic.

 

Went out for Xmas vacation and shot some PanX (expired 1983) at Mono Lake on a crisp winter day, Showed a print to my friend who is a professional cinema DP. His comment: "Wow, that really gets everything.". With old PanX going for 9 plus bux for a 120 roll, and nearly unfindable in LF, heck yeah I'd buy some. PanX and Verichrome Pan are the ne plus ultra of B+W films as far as I'm concerned, especially because of the excellent results they give in Caffenol, my preferred developer since I have to do my processing in my kitchen!

 

Oh yes!

Honestly I would buy several 100 ft. cans of 35mm Panatomic and at least 50 or more Pro-Packs of 120 film. I used these in the Mid-Seventies to the begin of Eighties - and enlarged these on Agfa Record Rapid in Kodak Selectol - one of the finest of all my enlargements!!

Best regards from Southern Germany - Lake of Constance
Jan-Peter

 

Exactly.
Panatomic X was discontinued already at the end of the 80ies! During the 'film boom era'. And why was it discontinued? Lack of demand! I still have an official statement from Kodak here from that time.
So even in the film era there were not enough users of this film. Now the market is a tiny fraction of the former market.
Therefore it would now impossible for Kodak to get enough users.

And we should not forget that currently Eastman Kodak is in very severe economic troubles because of their failure in their main business field industrial printing.
Now burning even much more money in such esoteric projects would be the most stupid thing they could do!

Best regards,
Henning

 

No matter how much "realists" try, we will always have a recurrence of these threads in which a few people will buy several hundred feet and others several bricks of it as if that was enough evidence to make an incontrovertible case for film X's restart.

I wonder why the realists even bother to give facts about what is needed to make it viable. Your contributions are an attempt to educate and are not needed nor welcomed. You are party-poopers and for the party-goers enjoyment, you must stay away

pentaxuser

 

the next-closest thing to is is Polaroid 55, (some of the 2008-09 stuff is still viable), which was basically using a thinner version of Pan-X as it's negative.

 

Just to throw this into the mix, if 1000 people bought 30-40 rolls per annum at 8-10GBP/ roll (not unreasonable for a specialty product) over and above current materials, then it might be viable. The equivalent quantities would be needed for 120 and sheet film. Perhaps we should start campaigning for Ilford to replace Pan-F with the Delta25 they R&D'd...

 

When Kodak first released Tmax 100 they claimed it gave results equivalent to or better than Pan X, it was only a touch faster in reality (it failed the ISO tests until Kodak had them changes). I found they weren't wrong Tmax 100 is a superb film.

I'd love a slower film particularly for LF work, but reality was I shot EFKE Pl25, and Tmax 100 at the same 50EI, same dev times the EFKE was only 25 ISO in Tungsten lighting.

Delta 25 would be great if they over0came the poor latent image issue of Pan F, I loved APX25 and used it with a 6x9 back on mt Wista 45DX quite a lot 30 years ago.

Ian

 

The joke's on film manufacturers when it comes to slow film. I can't use it up very fast.
As a photographer who considers a fine grain, high resolution 35mm negative to be a "good thing", quite different from it's coarser grained cousin the 400 speed film, I will always be in the market for it.
But because I can replace a box of 4x5 film with a roll or two of 35mm...
I get a better value and the manufacturer gets fewer sales dollars when I shoot slow film as a substitute for 4x5 film.

 

I suspect that the core market was a subset of the amateur 35mm sector, at least some of whom liked testing lenses and/ or claiming that by way of deeply arcane practices they could make images on 135 that pretended to MF or LF. It's a segment that has largely disappeared. Furthermore, Acros/ Delta 100/ TMX are generally faster, sharper, have a more useful curve and are at least as fine grained/ high-resolving. A Delta 25 would be interesting because it could potentially go beyond those films.

 

Tripod, cable release, MLU

 

That's what I was thinking... it is the subset of amateur photographers who use those.
But MLU is one step too far... I just don't want handhold blur.

 

The cameras that lock the mirror up when you use the self timer give you the best of all worlds.

 

I went back and looked at some of my FX negatives because of this thread. I had shot the same subject a few days apart on TMX, so I have a nice comparison. Honesty, I can't see much difference between them, I'd take TMX simply for 2 more stops of speed which will reduce motion blur.

 

Never in my life have I shot a roll of TMX. PXP and FP4 all the way with the occasional Delta 100 thrown in. Thanks to this thread I'm going to give it a try.

 

I doubt you'd see much difference in TMX compared to Delta 100.

 

I shot a roll of TMAX 100 yesterday, oddly I carried a tripod on the 12 mile hike and hardly ever used it. I hate when that happens.

 

Coincidence. Kodak could easily just raise the price. The cost of health care benefits is greater than that of silver, in each roll of film!

 

OK, once again, I'll say I would like Panatomic-X to return. But it won't; it is an old friend who has departed forever. This is a world of instant gratification; only a few of us here would use it. Here is an example from Eagle Lake, Mississippi, taken on a hazy morning with a Hasselblad, 80mm Planar CB lens, tripod-mounted, mirror pre-release.

 

Beautiful that’s what it’s good for.

 

The only thing that really would excite me is if Kodak would resurrect HIE. There is nothing now that cores anywhere near that film.

 

Plus X???? Pleasssseeeee!