Successor of Technical PAN?

About the time that the official announcement of Kodak halting TechPan sales was released, I had found a forgotten stash of 35mm and 120 TechPan in the deep recesses of my chest freezer. I had a thought that Wimberley's WD2D could work as it was giving me soft contrast in some initial trials on other films (this was my first exposure to WD2D). The TechPan negatives in this soup turned out great and contrast levels were well tamed and easily printed. If I give this new stuff a try, I know I'll include the WD2D in the trials, especially if it is found to have parallels to TechPan in general behavior.

I decided not to invest time in an abandoned film and listed it on eBay.... A bidding war broke out and it went for an obscene amount of $$$$ ! MF is certainly easier for squeezing quality medium-sized prints but it's also great sport to see what amazing things can be done on the small negative. This could have good potential for scanning duty so I hope the discussion of curling issues turns out to be overstated (my holders like flat film).

walter ivenz said:

Hello everybody,
we europeans can not understand the connection between microfilms and the tech-pan film. Because these 2 films are different types.
Usual microfilms have deep blacks with little differences in the tones.
Walter

Click to expand...

..we would agree with this assumption.

We have found this new film to respond well in both positive processing and negative processing [tecnadol]. It is not a Microfilm, i.e.; copex or imagelink, which in my opinion are just about good for nothing but microfilm use.

We have not experienced lesser results from this new film type in prior posts of this forums segment.


regards
dw
www.dr5.com

The results at the Digital vs. Analogue show at MONOCHROM in Berlin, two weeks before, brought positive results. Here they are.

1. a 35mm analogue film like GTP (photographed with Zeiss Ikon ZM, Biogon 2/35 with stop 4) you can compare – in resolution – in 20x25 inch enlargements with digital highend (PhaseOne, Leaf, etc with 72mm Schneider stop 11), of course there is some little grain in the analogue enlargement. A Gigabitfilm-rollfilm will have always a better quality than digital highend.

2. if you think in marketing categories, the professional photographer needs this quality now, because this quality is standard in digital highend.

3. to get an identic enlargement from 35er Gigabitfilm-negativs in 20 x 25 inch as digital highend prints of the same size, it is a good idea, not to look for best possible speed, but for a grain free quality. A modificated developer – parallel to the new HDR-chemistry – will allow this. This developer will follow soon.

4. Comparing the digital prints with analog prints in this quality class shows, that the MTF-values of the classic bw paper is not the best, but a 35mm enlargement in 20 x 25 inch is quite sufficient. For smaller enlargements it would be the best to use the better MTF-values of the AZO-paper. Now you have special enlarger for that and you will get a quality in the smaller sizes, you cannot get with any digital, because digital printing has the same resolution as normal bw paper – this is my conclusion.

5. analogue can strike back now.

The next result was to find the miracle of quality control for modern emulsions, the factor X. I will prepare a further article for that, because in german on
www.aphog.de :: Thema anzeigen - Photograpie mit hochauflösenden Filmen - allgemein -
I wrote a longer article of that.

Now the gate is open for a fault-free, enhanced chemistry. The Gigabitfilm HDR chemistry you can use as universal chemistry for all monodisperse films for halftone, as 100 years ago Rodinal for the classical emulsions.

In this article I describe the effects of a unsuited velvet in a cartridge I found, this textile has unsuited contents of auxiliaries (there exist around 6000 different for textile manufacturers), this auxiliary will contaminate the film and also the camera, sometimes via the film the developing tubes. When the unsuited cartridge is taken out of the camera, the auxiliary will stay as a molecular layer inside the camera on these parts, the film has touched. The next film gets in contact with that and mistakes in developing will happen. The new generation of colour and bw films can get qualitytrouble „thanks“ that, when you will develop in E6, C41 or bw like D76.

Replacement for TP in 35mm

Walter;

I can not give a recommendation to replace Kodak TP film in 35mm. When Tech Pan was discontinued, I switced to MF as the smallest size of film I still shoot. I use hasselbald, Pentax 67 and Mamiya C33. Three years ago I started in 4x5 and have collected a nice starer kit since then.

I have tried the earlier gigabitfilms in both 35mm and 4x5. The 35mm version is as least as good or better than 35mm tech pan. The 4x5 version is overkill for normal 4x5 photography, where lens diffraction is the limiting factor for sharpness.

Why have a 900 lp/mm film to use with a lense that can not give more than 61 lp/mm at f22?

I'm working with Lidwig of Gigabitfilm to get the new films imported to the USA. I just rewrote the 4 page technical sheet for the American market. I've been trying to get John Sexton's interest in this film as he is on the board of advisors of Freestyle Photo.