Panatomic-X? In a word, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes! Well, it's one word - just repeated, as we oldies do a lot.
Pan-X was a unique emulsion. It gave ultrafine grain without the hideous contrast that seems to be the trademark of every slow film on the market today. You could push it (within reasonable limits) and it reacted well with most developers on the market inthe 1970s and 1980s. I shot thousands of rolls of it in 35mm and 120 - my diary for 1985 indicates I bought 10 100-foot rolls of it that year (I still have some of my invoices for that year which indicate that Kodak Australasia was selling it for about A$44 then. At the time I ran no less than three bulk film loaders with Tri-X, Plus-X and Pan-X. In those long ago days now past.
I shot heaps of Pan-X long after it was discontinued in the late '80s and I processed it in Agfa Rodinal Special, a wonderful (and underrated) developer of the time, which also vanished from the local photo retail shop in the late '90s. On my walls at home are six framed 16 by 20 enlargements I printed on Ilford Galerie paper from Panatomic 35mm.No other film has ever given me such fine mid tones in large prints. With 120 Pan-X carefully shot and processed, I could have made mural size prints. Now no more. Ilford's Pan F is a good film, but in no way is it comparable to Panatomic. I've not tried the Efke or other slow films.
Kodak once claimed its (then new) TMax 100 was the replacement for and "as good as, even better than" Panatomic, as a Kodak Australasia PR rep once told me. I shot it for some years (and still do, now and then) before going over largely to Ilford FP4. To me TMax 100 is definitely not the same. The difference is in the mid tones and the lovely velvety contrast of Pan-X.
Market dictates being what they are these days, if Kodak does bring back E100 (I will be using it as a welcome antidote to the muted Agfa pastels and the overbrilliant Fuji greens and yellows in today's sadly limited range of E6 films), I will be in a state of ecstasy. A return of Plus-X would see me dancing for joy in the streets of Hobart. If Pan-x were to come back... I'll uncork my one surviving bottle of 1990 Penfold's Grange from my fast shrinking wine cellar, so far being kept for my 75th or 80th birthday, if I make it that far. For Plus-X, I would happily crack it open and drink it early.