About little over a year ago, when it was still readily available on the auction site, I picked up several 9.5" x 250' rolls of Agfa Aviphot Pan 200 (expired 2014). Why? I shoot a Cirkut No. 10 panoramic camera, which was made for film up to 10" wide. Ilford still offers 8" HP5+ and 10" FP4 during its annual ULF sale, but prices have climbed past $1,000 per roll—over $10 per foot. The Aviphot, by contrast, worked out to less than $1 per foot. My typical Cirkut prints run 3 to 6 feet, so the savings are substantial.
I also try to economize on chemistry by using rotary development in a 4" x 72" tube, which allows me to get consistent results with around 2L of a one-shot developer like Pyrocat-HD. The resulting negatives are contact printed using kallitype and Vandyke processes.
It seems many on this forum have a love-hate relationship with Aviphot and its rebranded variants For Cirkut work in 2025, though, there aren't many available alternatives. (I have stocks of a few other expired aerial and Cirkut films, but more Aviphot than any of the others.) To reduce waste from trial-and-error and to dial in my exposure and development, I cut some 4x5 sheets, followed the film testing procedure from Way Beyond Monochrome (also shared here), read the results on an X-Rite 361T in UV mode, and used the spreadsheet @RalphLambrecht kindly shared here on Photrio.
I landed on an effective EI of 40 in Pyrocat-HD 1:1:50, with a density range of 1.5 and an average gradient of ~0.70 at 11 minutes of rotary development. At 16 minutes, the film reaches a DR of 1.7. This range is giving me usable negatives for kallitypes and Vandyke prints.
I’m sharing my results below in case they’re helpful to anyone else working with this film in large format, rotary development, or alt-process workflows. (Or, for those who have more experience with this sort of thing than I do, feel free to tell me if any of this looks off.)
I also try to economize on chemistry by using rotary development in a 4" x 72" tube, which allows me to get consistent results with around 2L of a one-shot developer like Pyrocat-HD. The resulting negatives are contact printed using kallitype and Vandyke processes.
It seems many on this forum have a love-hate relationship with Aviphot and its rebranded variants For Cirkut work in 2025, though, there aren't many available alternatives. (I have stocks of a few other expired aerial and Cirkut films, but more Aviphot than any of the others.) To reduce waste from trial-and-error and to dial in my exposure and development, I cut some 4x5 sheets, followed the film testing procedure from Way Beyond Monochrome (also shared here), read the results on an X-Rite 361T in UV mode, and used the spreadsheet @RalphLambrecht kindly shared here on Photrio.
I landed on an effective EI of 40 in Pyrocat-HD 1:1:50, with a density range of 1.5 and an average gradient of ~0.70 at 11 minutes of rotary development. At 16 minutes, the film reaches a DR of 1.7. This range is giving me usable negatives for kallitypes and Vandyke prints.
I’m sharing my results below in case they’re helpful to anyone else working with this film in large format, rotary development, or alt-process workflows. (Or, for those who have more experience with this sort of thing than I do, feel free to tell me if any of this looks off.)