More Thin Pan F

cliveh · Nov 28, 2014

Thomas Bertilsson said:
I'm in the camp that Pan-F+ CAN yield high contrast.

But as with anything, what exactly is 'a high contrast film'? If you decrease developing time, you lower the contrast. If you slow down agitation to every 5 minutes from every 30 seconds, you will change the slope of the tone curve.

So, in essence, Pan-F+ is only high contrast if you develop it long enough to actually display high contrast. I could never understand why so much quality is ascribed to any film, when how we treat it when we expose and process it makes a much bigger difference than the built-in qualities.

I reiterate that to get the same overall contrast from Pan-F+ as I get from Tri-X or FP4+ I have to develop Pan-F+ 35% longer all other things equal. Isn't that the sign of a perfectly normal contrast film?

Bingo.

Ricardo Miranda · Nov 28, 2014

flavio81 said:
Ilford has over 80 years of doing business and having happy customers the world over.

Flavio
Ilford was born in 1879, it is more like 135 years old:

"1879 founded by Alfred Harman making Dry Plates"

It is older than Kodak.

railwayman3 · Nov 28, 2014

NB23 said:
Well, now it's become a fact that Pan-F is a low contrast film?

Pan-F is a high contrast film. And it's not supposed to lose latent image after a few days or weeks. Not in a drastic way that's become accepted around here.

I fully blame 2 things: bad manufacturing or bad handling from the manufacturer.

I really like that film. Used it enough to gave a solid opinion on it. And yes, I've had bad pan-F come my way. It was in no way a user error.

Now about the getting real for real part, I suggest you guyss to read this. If you can't understand it, I'm sure MichaelR will be delighted to translate it.
It's basically about the food industry selling bad meat to people and changing freshness dates and not caring about making people severely sick.
http://m.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/societe/2014/11/26/005-epiceries-trichent-date-emballage-viande-poisson-volaille.shtml

If the food industry does it as a standard practice, you bet film companies do not hesitate doing it as well. There are so many variables at play that a very bad film wlil always has its face saved versus the hundreds of user-errors possibilities.

I'm sticking to this and anyone that wants to argue against this is in severe delusiion.

I wish that I was confident enough in my photographic techniques to believe that my methods are superior to Ilford's (and Kodak or Fuji's) ethics and QC. Also, I'm fairly crap at my other interest of watercolor painting, but I look at my "hundreds of user-error possibilities" before I accuse Winsor & Newton of bad manufacturing or bad handling of their products.

And a case of (some of) the food industry (or any other industry) operating bad practices doesn't mean that every company in every business in the world does the same. Does the company where you work not operate to proper standards ?

As to the dating of film, I couldn't care less whether my film was manufactured yesterday, last year or 10 years ago, so long as it remains in good condition up to the expiry date on it. That's all I ask of any perishable or dated product.

More Thin Pan F

cliveh

Ricardo Miranda

railwayman3

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