Tech Pan equivalent?

[Tony-S]

Is there a film that is similar to technical pan?

 

[PBrooks]

Rollei ATP

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

For grain TMax 100 in Microdol-X comes very close if not equal to TP. It does not have the same 'large format look' that 35mm TP had, more a 'medium format look'.

I haven't been satisfied with the microfilms - Bluefire, Gigabit, etc.. The grain is fine enough, but the gradation reminds me of cheap newsprint photos.

 

[AgX]

You can use several ultra-high resolution films with special contrast reducing developer.
They all will outperform TP in resolution. The Rollei ATP however shares with the Kodak TP the extended red-sensitivity.

 

[ann]

check on Blue Fire Police

 

[brianmquinn]

I have never used this film but it may be what you are looking for.
ADOX CMS 20
http://www.adox.de/english/ADOX_Films/ADOX_Films/ADOX_CMS_Films.html

 

[Tony-S]

OK, Rollei ATP it is. Is there a Technidol equivalent as well?

I like the idea of the CMS 20, but I'm shooting 120.

Thanks.

 

[surfotog]

Formulary TD-3 works well with ATP.

 

[removed account4]

that is for the pictorial aspect of tech pan, what about
the pure black/white kodalith aspect of the film.

 

[surfotog]

If you're interested in the "pure black/white kodalith aspect of the film", you can probably use TD-3 for that as well. Contrast can be controlled with the ratio of stock solution to water. More stock, higher contrast. Haven't tried this myself.

If that's the "look" you're going for, I would think any developer will do.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

The black-white contrast of Kodalith is achieved by using a lithography developer, such as (surprise) Kodalith Developer in combination with a pre-press graphic arts film. Microfilms are very similar to lithography films, both have very small and very uniformly sized grains.

The mechanism of the developer is called 'infectious development' - because the developing film it looks like it has contacted a rapidly spreading infection. You won't get this behavior out of any conventional developer, and certainly not from one designed to produce pictorial results on microfilm.

Most lith developers use formaldehyde to promote the 'infectious' behavior. The developers are available cheaply and last for a long time as long as the A and B parts are kept separate.

If you have standard chemicals, Ansco-81 produces very acceptable lith-like behaviour and, unusual for a lith developer, has a very long working life.

Formulae and more information can be found at http://members.iinet.net.au/~forbes/lithdev.html

 

[photomem]

Funny thing is, I just bought three 35 mm rolls of Tech pan (previously frozen) at the Swap Meet in Nashville today. Paid .25 per roll

 

[removed account4]

thanks for the info!

john

 

[dynachrome]

Kodak Imagelink HQ has similar grain but different red sensitivity. If you need to make a large print you might just find it easier to use a regular film like ACROS or TMX of Pan F+ in 120 size than to exeriment with 35mm document film. I still have some Imagelink which was cut down to 120 size. That's for really large prints.

 

[cmo]

If you are shooting 120 film, what lens will be able to give you a resolution beyond the frontiers of Acros or Tmax 100?

How big are your prints if you want less grain than what you achieve with these films?

Just ask yourself if it's really worth it, all ultra-high resolution films are quite bitchy and pretty expensive.

 

[John Shriver]

D-19 will make for very stark contrast on High Contrast Copy (what I used to do), Tech Pan, or any of the microfilms. HC-110 can come pretty close as well.

 

[PKM-25]

No other tech film can be used in DR5, so I bought extra of TP in 120 rolls in order to do Ilfochrome prints for a eventual book project. A friend of mine just got a 30 x 30 of this and it looks stunning:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23585735@N06/3631113559/sizes/o/in/set-72157619811572752/

 

[surfotog]

Rollei ATP can be run in Dr5.

 

[Tim Gray]

Someone I know (on the internet) likes Spur DSX 64 as much as Tech Pan. I've never shot either, but just passing on the info.

 

[Nicholas Lindan]

If you are shooting 120 film, what lens will be able to give you a resolution beyond the frontiers of Acros or Tmax 100?

It isn't a matter of lens resolution Vs film resolution. Grain size has to be far finer than the lens resolution and decreases in grain size translate into improvements in the image.

Take a hypothetical worst case where the lens resolves 1 lp/mm and the film resolves 1 lp/mm. The film can have a grain size of 0.5 mm and all is well. Except that the only two tones that can be reproduced are black and white and no shade of gray is possible at the limit of resolution. If the grain size is 0.25 mm then 2 shades of gray can be resolved at the limits of the lens. If the grain size is fixed at 0.5mm then only features at 2 lp/mm can be resolved with two shades of grey. The smaller the grain size the more shades of grey can be realized, even though the image spatial resolution is still fixed at 1 lp/mm.

It is not the resolution that sets large-format photographs apart so much as the low contrast fine-detail that can be resolved. It's a simple matter of grains of negative image per area of print image. When it is a contact print the tonal resolution is at a maximum. I know of someone who wants to reduce 8x10 negatives down to 4x5 prints to get even more tonal depth in the print.

The same logic holds for ink-jet printers: they all print at 300 dpi and have the same resolution, but the more dots/inch the printer can lay down the better the fine detail it can show. High end printers can also change the size of the individual dots for even finer grey scale gradation.

TechPan differs from microfilm in that the grain sizes in TechPan are not uniform allowing it to have more gradation at fine detail than the simple grain size would indicate. Microfilm uses a uniform grain size because this gives high contrast and makes for a cheap film emulsion, both are plus features for making copies of newspaper pages. For pictorial effects this uniform grain size is a real problem and although compensating developers can be used to get some grey scale out of a microfilm the results look nothing like well done TechPan.

We think of black & white pictures as two dimensional. They aren't. Along with the X and Y location of a point on the image there is a third dimension of the tone at that point. TechPan film has superior resolution in the tone dimension, and the results really are 3-dimensional. More and finer grain means more information in the photograph, the limit isn't set by the resolution of the lens.