Pan F+ is awesome!

Roger Cole · Jan 5, 2016

I have a Pan F+ shot in bright sun I like a lot but the scene itself is not really high contrast except for specular highlights of sun on the ocean. It worked great for that (but I develop it in Diafine.)

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ritternathan · Jan 5, 2016

You can get away with shooting Pan F+ in bright sun, but I need to shoot it at EI 20-25 and develop it in Xtol 1+3 or something dilute to tame the highlights.

TheFlyingCamera · Jan 5, 2016

Here's an example of PanF+ shot in bright summer sun:

Taming the highlight on the egg is really tough, probably impossible. In this case, though, with the sunlight being as strong and directional as it is, it works. And that's an ostrich egg, which if you've ever seen one in real life, are on the dark side of ecru, verging on tan.

IIRC this was shot at ISO 25, developed in Pyrocat HD.

pentaxuser · Jan 5, 2016

Given that it's, at best a 50 speed film and in the U.K. we are an "overcast country" with very poor light for most of the year I do wonder whether Pan F was made for the British climate .

I think Ilford always had the U.S. market in mind. Most of the time we need a 3200 film - grainless of course

pentaxuser

markbarendt · Jan 5, 2016

TheFlyingCamera said:
Here's an example of PanF+ shot in bright summer sun:

Taming the highlight on the egg is really tough, probably impossible. In this case, though, with the sunlight being as strong and directional as it is, it works. And that's an ostrich egg, which if you've ever seen one in real life, are on the dark side of ecru, verging on tan.

IIRC this was shot at ISO 25, developed in Pyrocat HD.

I like the effect.

A question though were the highlight details available? If you had decided to print darker or burn a bit could you have printed the detail on top of the egg?

DREW WILEY · Jan 5, 2016

I also shoot Pan F at 25, but develop it in tanning pyro for even better pyro. Sure you can trap some highlight control on your egg or whatever, but at the expense of good shadow gradation, which will all bunch up into mud. You can't fool the characteristic curve. I always get a kick out of these web nonsense illustrations. Spend your life either at high altitude then in the darkroom trying to print these negs. One trip, just for the heck of it, I carried 6x9 roll film backs for my Ebony 4X5, along with Pan F, Rolleipan 25, and Efke 25. The former two are simply incapable of resolving deep shadows if you expect specular highlight gradation at the same time in full sun. I've since resorted to strictly ACROS for 120 use in the mtns as a realistic compromise, and for the excellent quality control which Efke lost toward the end. Pan F is nice around here on foggy beach days, though in those cases, I'm more likely to be toting an 8x10. That highly pronounced S-curve of Pan F does interpose very real limitations which no web bluff is going to overcome.

TheFlyingCamera · Jan 5, 2016

markbarendt said:
I like the effect.

A question though were the highlight details available? If you had decided to print darker or burn a bit could you have printed the detail on top of the egg?

The highlight on the egg is pretty well blocked-up. I don't know that I'd be able to burn it down enough without turning the rest of the egg middle gray. Given that this was roll film, there were limits to the custom development I could do to the image. Were I shooting it on sheet film, I'd have pulled development by at least a stop, maybe two, for this image. The shadows and mid-tones would have stayed about where they are, but the egg would have come down a bit.

Drew-

I was not posting this as an example of how awesome PanF+ is - this was meant to actually illustrate your point about how contrasty this film is and how sharp the characteristic curve is. It's a demonstration of what PanF IS, not what we want it to be.

georg16nik · Jan 5, 2016

The current film is Pan F+ not Pan F and the curve is not “highly pronounced S” if you know what your are doing.

DREW WILEY · Jan 5, 2016

Nice try. But there is something called a published Tech Sheet for Pan F PLUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS; and it shows a pronounced
S-curve, because there is one. I'd rather believe Ilford than some silly web chatter.

markbarendt · Jan 5, 2016

DREW WILEY said:
Nice try. But there is something called a published Tech Sheet for Pan F PLUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS; and it shows a pronounced
S-curve, because there is one. I'd rather believe Ilford than some silly web chatter.

I don't see a shoulder.

http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/20131021134532242.pdf

DREW WILEY · Jan 5, 2016

You need to compare this to the graphs for other films, and see how much range is represented. Nothing new here. Lots of articles have been
published over the years, and numerous developer tweaks formulated, in order to make the most out of the very well known short scale of
Pan F. No need to argue with me. Learn the hard way. I did.

piu58 · Jan 5, 2016

I measured a HD curve for Pan F+. The film was developed in Rodinal 1+50, 16° C, 10 minutes at continuous agitation. The curve shows:
- points: that are my measuring points. Because i tested the film with 50 ASA in mind, but it reaches only 35, my points are now between the zones
- triangles. That are the ideal values, taken from Lamprecht/Woodhouse
- the curve has two sections with different gamma. The film tends to speed up beyond zone 7, but not to an impractical degree.
- the lower part of the curve with lower local contrast is very short.

It could be a choice to increase the developing time by around 10-20% or lower the dilution. Then the zones 2 .. 7 would come into a higher gamma and mid tones stout out better. Highlights would came to a gamma of around 0.7. This is not too high, but some problems may raise. They can be easy overcome with flashing the paper.

The film is fine grained but sharp. 11x14 prints (30x40 in German) do not show any grain at normal viewing distance (0,5m).

DREW WILEY · Jan 5, 2016

In other words, in some graphs they simply truncate the relatively unusable part of the curve. You need to compare apples to apples, or plot
your own, if you have a transmission densitometer. And learning how to actually read curves takes some experience. I know this film quite well in terms of practical limitations. It can really sing; but not in every shower.

Gerald C Koch · Jan 5, 2016

markbarendt said:
I don't see a shoulder.

http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/20131021134532242.pdf

As Drew mentioned most often the entire H&W curve is not shown. Anyone viewing these curves needs to know this. I have seen some utter nonsense comments based on this erroneous assumption for both films and developers. But there is ALWAYS a shoulder and eventually the curve turns downwards. Most people find this last fact remarkable but it is the basis of some reversal techniques.

markbarendt · Jan 5, 2016

Gerald C Koch said:
As Drew mentioned most often the entire H&W curve is not shown. Anyone viewing these curves needs to know this. I have seen some utter nonsense comments based on this erroneous assumption for both films and developers. But there is ALWAYS a shoulder and eventually the curve turns downwards. Most people find this last fact remarkable but it is the basis of some reversal techniques.

I don't disagree but a typical ZS print, prints from data on the neg from somewhere around 0.1 and runs to somewhere around 1.2 neg density.

These charts truncate surely, but well past normal print range and there is no reason one couldn't use a bit of minus development to manage the contrast is there?

DREW WILEY · Jan 5, 2016

Flashing paper causes mud in the shadows. Compensating development render poor midtone expansion. Masking helps a little, but not much. The biggest improvement I got with Pan F was Gordon Hutching's slightly modified formula for PMK specifically for this film. The whole idea behind my comment, was yeah, there are ways to slightly improve Pan F performance in high contrast situations; but it's a helluva lot easier just to use a film with a longer straight line down into the shadows. It's one of the worst films on the market for deep shadow rendition. No problem if you match it to the luminance of the scene. Take a walk with me in the redwoods. In the morning fog, you have one kind of situation - natural softbox. Pan F fine. Once the fog lifts, you have eleven or twelve stops of range in the woods. Nobody on earth is going to get shadow detail and highlight sparkle onto Pan F at the same time. Like I said, this film has been well known for quite
awhile.

markbarendt · Jan 5, 2016

Thanks Drew

ColColt · Jan 5, 2016

This thread got my interest and I looked back at my notes on Pan F and it appears I once used it at ASA 32 and developed in Rodinal 1:100 for 9 minutes. I haven't shot any any a long time but ordered several rolls not long back. I'll have to see if this still works.

DREW WILEY · Jan 5, 2016

But please, please don't misunderstand me. Pan F has its limitations; but there really aren't many choices in fine-grained small format films. Pan F has lovely edge effect and a very good impression of resolution. An early addict of it around here was Jim Galvin, who manufactured his own line of lightweight view cameras, including a roll-film back version. He had an interesting article or two about taming Pan F with pyro. Then Gordon Hutchings fiddled around quite a bit to discover a pyro tweak that gets more mileage out of it than anything else I've personally used. I've got a pair of 16X20 prints of the same driftwood log over at Pt Reyes under the same soft lighting, one taken with very long scale Bergger 200 8x10 film, the other with 6x9 Pan F. The personality of the prints is utterly different. That's because these two film have utterly different characteristic curves. But I don't know which print is actually like best. They each work superbly in their own way.

Gerald C Koch · Jan 5, 2016

markbarendt said:
These charts truncate surely, but well past normal print range and there is no reason one couldn't use a bit of minus development to manage the contrast is there?

Not saying Pan-F isn't a useful film. But it has serious limitations and certainly would not be described as "awesome." A better description would be "useful." I really have had a lot of trouble with this film. I now rate it at an EI of 32 and develop it in D-23 1+1 when I do use it.

I originally purchased Pan-F with hope that it could be combined with the Beutler developer as I did with Kodak Pan-X. A truly wonderful combination which I discovered serendipitously as a "starving college student." The Beutler formula was the cheapest developer I could find. Sadly over the years I have never found another film to replace Pan-X. Although Eastman 5220 XT Pan was a good substitute. Sadly gone too.

Anon Ymous · Jan 5, 2016

markbarendt said:
I don't see a shoulder.

http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/20131021134532242.pdf

Well, there isn't, at least when using Ilfotec HC. But this is the last version of the datasheet for this film. Back around 2000, the datasheet had a characteristic curve for PanF+, developed in ID11, which showed a strong shoulder:

Gerald C Koch · Jan 5, 2016

Anon Ymous said:
Well, there isn't, at least when using Ilfotec HC. But this is the last version of the datasheet for this film. Back around 2000, the datasheet had a characteristic curve for PanF+, developed in ID11, which showed a strong shoulder:

Sorry but there has to be a shoulder; the characteristic curve cannot continue rising to infinity. Actually the term shoulder is a poor one when describing a curve. The correct mathematical term is inflection point. As previously pointed out the curve will always level out and then turn downwards. All characteristic curves have the same general shape regardless of the film or developer. (A graph showing the entire curve is often included in books on photographic development theory.) You can see from Ilford's documentation the curve is beginning to turn horizontal but Ilford truncates the curve just after this point. Kodak does the same thing for its HC-110 developer. Really a poor thing to do as it leads to confusion.

Keith Tapscott. · Jan 6, 2016

The prints I have seen by Bill Spears on Pan F+ are stunning. Not sure if he still posts here on APUG though.

Xmas · Jan 6, 2016

ColColt said:
This thread got my interest and I looked back at my notes on Pan F and it appears I once used it at ASA 32 and developed in Rodinal 1:100 for 9 minutes. I haven't shot any any a long time but ordered several rolls not long back. I'll have to see if this still works.

It is also OK in Rodinal 100+1 stand @20C assume an ISO 64 and meter carefully

Xmas · Jan 6, 2016

Anon Ymous said:
Well, there isn't, at least when using Ilfotec HC. But this is the last version of the datasheet for this film. Back around 2000, the datasheet had a characteristic curve for PanF+, developed in ID11, which showed a strong shoulder:

My PanF+ bulk best before date was '04, I still get graduation in high lights.
On a 8x10 Delta100 and PanF+ similar...

Pan F+ is awesome!

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Pan F+ is awesome!

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