I got a bulk roll of Tech Pan at a garage sale

I got a bulk roll of Kodak Tech Pan at a garage sale. I've never used it. Any suggestions on where to start with EI, developer and processing time?

Thanks in advance!

Are you intending to use it for continuous tone images? If so there are several special purpose developers to tame the contrast. All the way from the simple POTA developer to H&W Control and Perfection XR-1.

Gerald C Koch said:

Are you intending to use it for continuous tone images? If so there are several special purpose developers to tame the contrast. All the way from the simple POTA developer to H&W Control and Perfection XR-1.

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I'm looking for continuous tones. Will stand development in highly diluted developer tame the contrast? Thanks for your help.

Photographers Formulary have a dedicated developer for tech pan that works great for continuous tone. I've used it, wonderful creamy tones. Nice score btw.

GregW said:

Photographers Formulary have a dedicated developer for tech pan that works great for continuous tone. I've used it, wonderful creamy tones. Nice score btw.

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I have but have not used yet. What EI did you use?

Mainecoonmaniac said:

I'm looking for continuous tones. Will stand development in highly diluted developer tame the contrast? Thanks for your help.

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Never tried very dilute conventional developer. However my experience is that the usual developers just don't tame the contrast. It's been quite a while but I seem to remember that H&W Control developer gave the best results.

Gerald C Koch said:

Never tried very dilute developer. However my experience is that the usual developers just don't tame the contrast. It's been quite a while but I seem to remember that H&W Control developer gave the best results.

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Great! I'll give it a try. What Asa do you suggest?

I shot it at 25 asa with the PF developer. Or maybe it was 32. I think they recommend 32? its been a year or so.

GregW said:

I shot it at 25 asa with the PF developer. Or maybe it was 32. I think they recommend 32? its been a year or so.

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Hey thanks! You're the best.

With H&W Control diluted 1+15 use an EI of 64 and develop for 13 m @ 20C. Agitate continuously for the first minute and then for 5 s every three minutes.

Gerald C Koch said:

With H&W Control diluted 1+15 use an EI of 64 and develop for 13 m @ 20C. Agitate continuously for the first minute and then for 5 s every three minutes.

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Thanks for the info! Looking forward to playing with Tech Pan. Now I gotta find the recipe for H&W Control developer.

i bought some TD-3 from photo form and use that. shoot at 40 or 50 depending on the light and the negs are great.

H&W can be found if you search. I have a friend who used Tom Hoskinson's TEA as its similar but uses TEA

The developer recipe listed below is my TEA version of H&W Control, formulated for multi-year shelf life. This modified H&W Control formula should give you similar sensitometric results to those obtained with commercially packaged Bluefire HR.
Solution A:
Triethanolamine 75 ml
Hydroquinone 0.32 g
Phenidone 2.2 g
Triethanolamine to 100 ml


Solution B
Water 750 ml
Sodium sulfite 4.5 g
Sodium carbonate 2.3 g
Water to 1 liter

Add 25 ml Solution A to 250 ml Solution B, then add water to make 1 liter of Working Solution.

Phenidone and Hydroquinone are soluble in TEA. Warm the Triethanolamine to 80° to 100°F in a water bath. Then mix the chemicals in the order shown, and be sure each is completely dissolved before adding the next.

Use with Bluefire Police, Agfa and Fuji microfilms, and Kodak Technical Pan. Gives unacceptably flat images on ordinary films.

Shelf life of solution A is expected to be very long (years).
Shelf life of solution B is expected to be 2-3 years.

With the obscene prices it's going for, you should consider selling it on eBay and retiring early.....

craigclu said:

With the obscene prices it's going for, you should consider selling it on eBay and retiring early.....

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Really? I'm an old fart getting close to retirement but having a posh one makes it better

This is the Kodak datasheet which I have found helpful. http://wwwca.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/p255/p255.pdf

I have gotten reasonable results with HC-110 dil F. I have also gotten poor results with HC-110. Unfortunately, I didn't take careful notes about exposure and development and don't remember which combination worked.

When shooting this bulk roll, make sure you take detailed notes until you find what works for you. I didn't and now regret it.

Wallendo said:

This is the Kodak datasheet which I have found helpful. http://wwwca.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/p255/p255.pdf

I have gotten reasonable results with HC-110 dil F. I have also gotten poor results with HC-110. Unfortunately, I didn't take careful notes about exposure and development and don't remember which combination worked.

When shooting this bulk roll, make sure you take detailed notes until you find what works for you. I didn't and now regret it.

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I've read that it's a difficult film to use. Isn't it basically a microfiche film adapted for continuous tone film? Is the only attraction to the film is not it's tonality, but it's near grainlessness?

It is such a fine grain film, using something like Rodinal even at 1-100 dilution will be a travesty. The last time I used it was with 120 size exposed at 50iso and I used Ilford ID11 diluted 1-3 with minimal agitation which gave quite easily printed negatives.However I had to use Grade 1 filters with Multigrade. It was a film that didn't take too kindly to over development but when it all came together the results were unbelievable.
Oh how I wish films such as Tech Pan and HIE Infra Red were still available.

It’s been many years since I used it so I’m going by memory here, but I’m pretty sure I used it at ISO 25 and developed in a liquid developer from Ilford that’s no longer available (Universal Film Developer). It was a general-purpose developer that was very much along the lines of ID-11 or D-76.

With that combination I got very fine grain and very high contrast, which is what I was after at that time. For more conventional gradation I preferred Pan F.

Yeah, Tech Pan, HIE and Plus-X were three of my favorite films ever. I miss them.

For starters I think you will find it is 45m or 150' long, but this will fit into a normal bulk film holder. It is a very thin film.

Your negatives may look a bit thin, but before you start adding more development or exposure, check first that you can get detail from thin looking negatives.
Kodak Technidol liquid developer is the developer for pictorial images from this film. No longer available, I gave my last 8 containers of Technidol developer away last year to a friend, he had found some film, I had the developer.

Back in the day the idea was to do enormous enlargements from this film, diffuser enlargers work best. It is possible to take a full length portrait of someone, then make a single full length portrait picture using roll paper of the subject with no visible grain at a normal viewing distance of about 4m. Kodak Ektar 25 Professional film, released in the eighties, was the colour equivalent.

We used this film in a funny way, nothing at all like the people from Kodak envisioned. Using the advantage of the thinner stock, we loaded this film onto a 250 frame bulk film back attached to a Nikon F3 with the MD4 motor drive powered by an outside power source and the frame speed operated independently of the camera by using what is called a "firing rate converter".

We were filming B&W television advertisements that were as out of this world as you could conceive, ideas wise, that is. However the account executive dreamed this up, we have no idea, but he/she did. We went through the motions time and time again over a couple of days shooting. Development was done in a 30cm wide Kreonite E6 roller transport processor converted to B&W film developing. Our developer of choice, was Kodak D76; all we ever used actually. The film being so thin the rollers couldn't grab the film, so we attached a plastic leader and it was off. After the plastic leader was through, we took turns to pull the film through the machine without damaging it; bugger of a job but we had fun.

The ads were very forgettable, but they won some kind of obscure award.

Mick.

Imagelink is the anointed follower of TechPan. I have some IL-HQ in 16mm for the subminiatures. Just as hard to get a good developer so you will be right at home again!

EI 25, Develop in Technidol per instructions or the equivalent from Photographer's Formulary.

That would be for fresh, so you may want to reduce the exposure index to compensate for the age of the film.

Hypered Tech Pan was a favorite for astrophotography, because high contrast development (developed in D-19, for example) would pull a ton of detail out of the background.

Good advice.: EI 25, Develop in Technidol per instructions or the equivalent from Photographer's Formulary.

It has a very narrow grain size distribution. In an "normal" developer it will produce high contrast.

It is very sensitive to development by products so you need very high agitation or you will get non-uniform densities.


Attached is the Kodak data sheet.

www.makingkodakfilm.com

Well that just shows that some people are just lucky. Good for you.

laser said:

Good advice.: EI 25, Develop in Technidol per instructions or the equivalent from Photographer's Formulary.

It has a very narrow grain size distribution. In an "normal" developer it will produce high contrast.

It is very sensitive to development by products so you need very high agitation or you will get non-uniform densities.


Attached is the Kodak data sheet.

www.makingkodakfilm.com

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Thanks for the data sheet and advice. All the the great responses have motivated me to load some up, shoot and develop the Tech Pan. The bulk roll has been sitting in a cool and dark spot for months because I didn't know what to do with it.

I have some old bottles of Technidol, does it go bad, or should it still be usable on my last 2 rolls?
When it was current I shot a few rolls and had difficulty getting a decent wet print, so never bought any more. Just last night I scanned some of the old negs and they came out beautifully! No discernible grain, they really leap out of the screen as something special.