Sunday, December 17, 2006

Developing Kodak Technical Pan film


Kodak Technical Pan film is a specialized film not intended for pictorial photography, but with appropriate development is capable of excellent results in this application. 510-Pyro is especially well suited to this film, as it enhances sharpness through emulsion tanning and not increased graininess like other acutance developers do. With 510-Pyro the ultrafine grain of TP is retained, allowing enlargements of 20X or more without the appearance of grain, and the liquid smooth gradation of much larger formats.

To make 300ml of working solution, add 1 ml of 510-Pyro concentrate to 300ml of water at 70F, and stir. To make 600ml of working solution, add 2ml of 510-Pyro concentrate to 600ml of water at 70F, and stir. That’s all there is to it!

Optimum development time depends on the contrast of the scene photographed, among other things, so some compensation might be required for scenes of abnormally high or low contrast. For normal scenes, high quality negs can be made by developing TP in 510-Pyro as follows:

EI: 25-40
Dilution: 1:300
Time: 20:00
Temp: 70F
Agitation: continuous for first minute, and 10-15 sec at 10:00 (semi-stand)

Increased agitation frequency will require a corresponding reduction in development time. For normal intermittent development with agitation at 10 sec./minute, develop for 16 minutes.

2 comments:

Michael Sebastian said...

Jay, that image is just butter smooth and creamy. Too bad one can't get Tech Pan in 120 anymore. I like TMX or Delta 100 or Efke 25/50 (especially the latter) as fine-grain quasi-substitutes.

I've always been an Xtol man for most films but as my volume of film decreases i'm transitioning to developers with long shelf lives. So it's Mytol or PC-TEA for an Xtol equivalent and 510-pyro for a staining developer.

What's been your experience with 510P and the T-grain emulsions?

jdef said...

Hi Mike.

I get excellent results from TMX/TMY, and I've seen excellent results from TMZ, but haven't used that film myself. I sold off most of my TP, and use TMX when I want grainless prints. If you look at the photo of my son, Leaf, that was shot on TMX EI 200, and developed in GSD-10. There's a link to my GSD-10 blog on the right top, along with a link to my Hypercat blog. All three of these developers work very well with T-grain films. I haven't used much Efke 25, but found TMX to be finer grained, and sharper, and just a better film all around. I shoot a lot of Pan F+ and that's the slowest film I normally use. Thanks for your comments.