ilford pan f plus what will it give me?

Just bought 100ft roll of Pan f+ 35mm the guy who sold it me swears its the business developed in Rodinal mixed 1:70, I intend to try this combo, whats your favourite developer for pan f + and what do you use it for ?Oh! and before you say taking photographs, I mean is it good for landscapes,buildings,portraits etc.

Ilford Pan F+ is the last fine grain film made by a major film maker. Kodak having stopped manufacture of Panatomic X some years ago and Agfa manufacture of their AgfaPan 25 film a couple of years ago.

Expect to see very fine grain, with very good resolution. I would not recommend it for portraiture since it will tend to show every blemish. Pan F+ tends to be contrasty so avoid overdevelopment. To see the benefits of this film avoid camera shake, use of a tripod is recommended.

I've been playing with Pan F plus lately, too. I have used it on landscapes but have not yet tamed contrast. I recently shot some railyard stuff with it, souped in FX-39 (from recommendations on apug). Examples are at

http://www.pbase.com/romosoho/image/48026529/medium
http://www.pbase.com/romosoho/image/48026530/medium
http://www.pbase.com/romosoho/image/48294857/medium

allan

I have always liked the slow films as much for their gradation as for grain and sharpness. I will use Pan F+ for any subject where the film speed is adequate. Most of my photography is scenic views. cityscapes, still life and nature and people pictures.

I develop with stand development in Pyrocat HD diluted 1:1:250. Generally, slow speed films do not tend to show graininess from a given developer as readiliy as will medium/high speed films. On the other hand Pan F certainly provide higher contrast from extended development more rapidly than the medium/high speed films.

Highly recommended film.

I use Pan F+ in both 35mm and 120 with Rodinal. Typicaly, I use 1:50 dillution, but with Rodinal, you have many options. 1:100 works well also. I typicaly cut both speed and development times based on the lighting conditions unless the light is very flat. For average brightness (soft shadows) cut speed to 25 and development times by %25 and for strong light cut speed another 1/3 stop and dev time by %33.

Pan F+ gives fantastic results with Rodinal. I have never seen blocked up highlights in my images, but I suppose that all has to do with how you expose and develop. I suggest giving it a shot.

- Randy

This is my favorite portrait film - smooth tones, sharp, almost grainless. I did some landscape shooting with it and developed in WD2D+ which, like the other pyro developers, tends to keep the highlights under control. I was rewarded with easy to print negatives (35mm and 120) that needed little or no dodging and burning or other darkroom fussing to get nice prints. I metered at about 32 to 40 for some better shadow detail for the landscapes, box speed for portraits regardless of whether they were done in natural light or with studio strobes. I personally like the little bit of extra contrast this film gives and have yet to find it unmanageable.

Joe

jdef said:

What about TMX? TMX is both faster, and finer grained than Pan F+. Fuji Acros is also at least as fine grained as Pan F+.

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TMX has too many problems such as blocked highlights and a narrow tonal scale.

Claire Senft said:

I develop with stand development in Pyrocat HD diluted 1:1:250.

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Is this for 35mm or 120 and for what time, Claire ?

I start with a liter of tap water at 70ºF. I add 4 ml of part A. I add 3 grams of washing soda in place of part B. The loaded reel reel is paced on a lifting rod and pre-soaked for 5 minutes in tap water @ 70ºF. I work in the dark with tanks that are uncovered. The developer is in a tank which is in a water bath of running water from a thermostatic valve that will maintain 70ºF. The rod with the reel..please no fishing jokes..is moved to the developing tank. The lifting rod is raised and lowered in approximately 2 inch strokes taking about 1.5 seconds each. I try to avoid any twisting motion since it would give more agitation to film at the outside of the reel than the film near the center. This continues for 1 minute.
I allow the Pan F+ to remain in the developer with no agitation for another 37 minutes. The film is then stopped and fixed. This 38 minutes of stand developement produces Pan F+negatives that are to my liking for printing via condensers film that was exposed to a scene with a difference in incident light reading of 2.7 to 3 stops between lit and shadowed areas. This is about the amount of contrast between lit and shadowed areas that I encounter for a scene that is receiving full unobscured sunlight during the prime daytime hours. I am always working with negatives that are first latensified with dim light and they are receiving probably 10% more development than I would have chosen if I were not latensifying. My usual aim point is for a grade 2 Medalist paper that I have on hand. I do not ordinarily seek to produce prints with a pure black or white. Rather I normally strive to only produce a print of moderate contrast that may or may not contain the extremes of the tonal scale. I limit myself to the equivalent of 1 36 exposure roll per liter tank of developer this highly dilute Pyrocat HD.

I normally bulk load my film in short rolls of 18 inch length and use all six of the negatives on the same scene with identical exposures. Each rolls is developed as I see fit. If I wish to have more or less contrast on my negatives for whatever reason then I give more or less exposure and develoment to them. Of course I decide this prior to taking the photograph. With this latensification and developing scheme as outlined above I base my exposure on a shadow reading with an incident meter set to an IE of 200 which is normal for a film giving a true film speed of ISO 100. I am not going to go into my developing time extensions or contractions here.

If you already have a good film speed that you are using for Pan F+ that receives normal development then you are already set. If that is not the case I would recommend starting at a film speed of 32.

If you are interested in low light latensification I started a thread devoted to it in January 05. Read the thread thoroughly if interested and try it.
If you have done that at a minimum and need help PM me. If you a just curious but unwilling to try it first I may be less helpful.

I am only working in 35mm so you can pretty well guess for which format these instructions are intended.

Develope it in Rodinal 1+50 and you will be a very happy person. It's my favorite combination.

jdef said:

I find Pan F+ an excellent film for portraiture. With appropriate handling, I get creamy, super-smooth skin tones.

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It's as good a film as has ever been made by anyone. What a shame that they don't make it in sheet film.

c6h6o3 said:

It's as good a film as has ever been made by anyone. What a shame that they don't make it in sheet film.

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I can think of a good reason it's not made in sheet film sizes. It's too darned slow! Don't get me wrong. I really like this film. You can make some really nice images with it from 35mm and medium format negatives, but for large format it would be overkill. I doubt that you'd be able to to notice a difference in apparent grain on same sized prints viewed at normal distances between a print made from a PanF+ negative vs. the same scene photographed on something faster like FP4+.

Consider that with large format cameras, typical lens aperture settings are usually in the f/16 to f/32 range and sometimes even smaller. On a clear bright day that will give you shutter speeds anywhere from 1/30 to 1/8 second. So far everything is cool and there is no reciprocity failure. OK, so now the light changes and you are down a couple of stops and you need slower shutter speeds. According to Ilford, reciprocity failure for this film starts to rear its ugly head at anything slower than 1/2 second. "So what," you say, I'll just extend my exposure times even more to compensate. But that's not the end of the story. To compensate for increased contrast, you have to cut back your development time, lowering your effective film speed even more meaning you need to add more exposure... and so it goes.

To be fair, Ilford makes no mention of adjusting development times for extra long exposures in their technical publication for PanF+. Kodak does mention the technique for Plus-X and Tri-X though not for the TMax line of films. PanF+ is a conventional grain film with reciprocity failure characteristics not all that different Plus-X and I'd be surprised if you didn't need to make the same sort of adjustment for PanF+.

You can look this stuff up for yourself. The Ilford document for PanF+ is here:
http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/pdf/Pan_F_Plus.pdf
Kodaks document for Plus-X is here:
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f4018/f4018.pdf

I've been using Pan F with Rodinal 1:50 for years and think it's probably the best combo there is for 35mm. Great stuff! Actually, I'm using the "old" Rodinal -- J&C's R09 developer. Either way, the results are superb. However, I rate the film at EI 25, not 50 and in so doing have great shadows and highlights, smooth gradations, invisible grain, etc.

Usually bulk films have a much higher fb+f, so that may affect the final results, but I cannot speak from experience on Pan F in bulk. IN any case, Pan F and Rodinal is a killer combo that can't be beat -- just be sure to test for film speed and Zone VIII density to get the right time.

It was Pan F that got me on the hook when I started out making prints in the early eighties. I exposed it at iso 32 and developed it in Perceptol (1+3, 17 minutes at 20C). I still go back to those negatives and enjoy the great quality of them.

mmcclellan said:

Usually bulk films have a much higher fb+f

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I have never heard this before. Does anyone have any data on this?

fschifano said:

I can think of a good reason it's not made in sheet film sizes. It's too darned slow!

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Hi Frank, I hear what your're saying, but doesn't Efke make their ISO 25 film in sheets? Perhaps there just isn't room in the market for more than one.

Slow, fine grained traditional films in Rodinal are a classic combination. Definitely worth giving it a go, and seeing how you like it.

I'd try PanF+ in sheet sizes if it existed. I'm not sure I like the spectral response of Efke 25, but I do like the look of PanF+. In the studio with strobes, slow can be a good thing, and fast can be a problem ("can we gel down those lights three stops?").

David:

Good point, and one that I didn't think of.

Another vote for Rodinal 1:50, with moderate agitation (I swirled my Paterson tank like a glass of ice cubes for 10 seconds every minute). And yes, I used it for portraits - lovely skin tones - creamy smooth yet sharp. But you have to be careful about skin blemishes - but I would say, you really always do, unless you think a Delta 3200 priotrait is a good thing!

I choose slow films for LF for their contrast characteristics. I have always had trouble with low SBR images with fast film. My negs fall flat and the scene needs too much added contrast. I always carry some FP4 with my view camera for images that will need expansion. And likewise I always carry LF TRI-X for scenes that have SBR of 7 or greater.

I used my last roll of Pan F last year on a client who wanted 16x20 portraits of himself and his wife. I shot it in 6x6 and developed them in MicrodolX. The tonality at 16x20 was very nice. Very sharp as well with very little grain ... all things considered. I have stayed with FP4 at EI 80 since then. It does for me what Pan F did and I can keep my familiarity between LF and MF emulsions.

out of the loop!

David A. Goldfarb said:

I'd try PanF+ in sheet sizes if it existed.

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Whoa there...!! David - since when did they stop making it in 4x5??

Rodinal and Pan F+ is a great combo, and it can give you different results. It needs some getting-used-to, but the result you will get after some experiments with it is worth it all.

I do the film in 1+50 and 1+100.

jdef said:

What to expect? Very fine grain, excellent sharpness, and probably, blocked highlights (if you use Rodinal).

Jay

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I don't understand what you mean when you predict "blocked highlights".

Ansel Adams used the term to describe the effect of a shoulder that falls low enough on the curve to give important high values sub-proportional densities. In other words, the film no longer separates Zones VII, VIII, and IX.

I also see the term "blocked highlights" used to describe the opposite condition, a film with clear separation of high zones ( whether the film / developer combination has a straight line through the high values, or an upswept curve ). The problem usually described in that case is not that film is deficient, but the scale of the scene cannot be printed by the photographer.

The term "Blocked Highlights" really describes two different effects. This is important because there are different remedies to the result.

I found an interesting case a few years ago, learning to use Pan F with FX-1. When I arrived at a development time that gave normal low and mid tone densities at EI 50, my high values ran too high, as a result of a slightly upswept curve.

By reducing the agitation from 5 seconds every minute to 5 seconds every 5th minute, and increasing the development time, a long straight line through the high values occured.

By further increasing the development time, and reducing the agitation to 5 seconds every 15 minutes, a shoulder was introduced.

Similar results occured using Rodinal ( independent of dilution). Similar results occured with TMX and TMY with either developer.

It has, therefore, been my experience that what happens in the highlights of a negative has more to do with HOW the film is handled in the developer than perceived (or legendary) characteristics of a film or developer. By using terms like "Blocked Highlights, which hold different meanings for different photographers, we often confuse issues which are otherwise capable of easy comprehension.

Pan F is a film that is very sensitive to agitation. It will respond in several common developers with either a straight line through the highlights, an upswept curve, or a slight shoulder. I think this accounts for why it is perceived differently by many photographers.

And this is why I asked how you were using the term "blocked highlights". Thanks.

.

Sparky said:

Whoa there...!! David - since when did they stop making it in 4x5??

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Not for some time. If you check the Ilford literature, their July 2004 technical data sheet for PanF+ only lists 35mm and 120. I suppose they figured anyone who wanted a fine grain sheet film from Ilford would use Delta 100, even though they are completely different films in terms of tonality.

I've had, for me, great results using Pan-F+ for portraits.

This one, for example:

http://www.mcgrattan.f2s.com/images/iced_coffee.jpg

Unfortunately, I don't know how this shot was processed since it dates from when I was still getting my developing done in a lab.

Another slow fine-grained film that I have developed myself is Maco Ort25c.

This shot was done that way:

http://www.mcgrattan.f2s.com/images/ort25c.jpg

That particularly shot the highlights aren't perfect but the contrast seems tamed and the skin tones aren't bad considering it's orthochromatic.