Loosing Technical Pan...Who Will Really Miss It?

[J. P. Mose]

I'll be the first to admit that I was disappointed and annoyed by Kodak's decision to discontinue Tech Pan. But I will also be the first to admit that I hardly ever use it. I have tried it in 35mm and 4x5 only because I got a super deal on the film. I developed it in Rodinal 1:75 and acheived good results. When I mentioned this to other folks I know who develop B&W film, I never found anyone who uses it. Most considered it too fussy to work with. In my mind, it has always been a reference for extreme sharpness, high resolution and very fine grain. However, the results acheived with Delta 100 and T-Max 100 have been satisfactory for me (personal choice of course).

Now for the questions.....

Are there any other B&W films (with fairly normal contrast) that will yield the same (or close) results as Tech Pan (Resolution, Sharpness, etc.)?

How does Ekfe 25, Ilford Pan 50, etc. compare? Are they even close?

Is Tech Pan overkill in large format?

I'd like to hear strong reasons for liking or disliking Tech Pan.

Thanks in advance!

J. P. Mose

[Brian Ellis]

It isn't overkill in large format. While the fine grain may not be needed, it's an excellent film in very low contrast situations. For example, in their southwest workshops both John Sexton and Don Kirby teach a method for using it to photograph petroglyphs, where there often is no more a stop difference between the colors in the petroglyphs and the underlying rock.

It looks like Kodak is determined to get rid of all their black and white films except T Max.

[David R Munson]

I won't miss it, personally, as I never use it, but it does bother me that they're dropping yet another film. Maybe they really are determined to reduce their offerings to nothing but TMax. Realistically, probably not, but it sure feels like that sometimes.

[Bruce Watson]

Never used it. But the reason to morn is, you've lost the option to use it should the need arise. Sort of like taking that short stubby screw driver I've used about once out of my tool box. If I do need it, then what?

When they reduce the tool box down to a single size of phillips screwdriver, I'm in trouble.

Then again, if that screwdriver his 100TMax, I'll already be gone. I've never used that particular tool either... Why they keep pushing TMax, when their biggest seller is Tri-X, is just bonkers. Clearly, TMax has a higher profit margin -- but what happened to the idea of making what the customers want?

Oh, wait - George Eastman died, didn't he?

[CP Goerz]

It was a very fine grained film but difficult to handle in a landscape situation and the grain wasn't all that sharp I found.

The slower speed films out there on the market are excellent and are an easy to use alternative. Good edges and although the contrast can get out of control if you aren't careful they aren't even close to Tech Pan. Just my 2 cents :-)

CP Goerz

[Dan Fromm]

Hogarth, he didn't just die, he chose to die. Suicided. Set an example that I hope EKCo isn't following.

Sorry,

Dan

[Jay DeFehr]

I don't know of another film like TP, and I will definitely miss it. For portraits in very low contrast light, it has no equal. R.I.P.

[e]

Great for 35mm. I've shot quite a bit of this with a Leica and a DR Summicron and other Leica lenses and it is astonishing given the right light and lens/aperture combination. It has it's own look and feel but in the right situation and with the right developer (not tecknidol) there is simply no contest with other films. I will probably end up buying some for a rainy day.

[Jim Ewins]

For drama its hard to beat Tech Pan. I've used it in three formats to good effect. I don't know about fussy. Rodinal & HC110 both do a great job. I've had less bromide streaking with it than others esp in 4x5. I may lay in a life supply (wouldn't be all that much) Jim

[Peter C. McDonough]

I'll miss it. The only problem I have had with it in twenty years of shooting it involved streaking with the 120 size. A pre-developer water bath cured that. I love the film. I have never understood why so many have had problems with it. As has been stated before, there is nothing like it on the market. Peter

[David F. Stein]

Verichrome Pan, Ektapan, Plus-X Pan, Tech Pan - it ain't a good season for Pans. There was a time when mens' hats, gloves etc. came in distinct sizes - 7-1/2, etc. Then we went through the Small, Medium, Large era. Now, it's T-Max 100 ... I mean One Size Fits All! I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see shoes sold in 4 or 5 size ranges, as opposed to the current 1/2 steps.

[Martin Courtenay-Blake]

There is an alternative ultra fine film that could certainly be used for general photography...

Gigabit film is available in Europe (and I believe from J&C Photo in the US) in ISO40 35mm and ISO25 5X4 sheet film. It requires special chemistry which can be purchased as a kit with the film or seperately. The 35mm version offers 700lpm resolution whilst the sheet film achieves 900lpm.

I have not used it but I have seen pictorial images on the web and it looks very impressive. I'm sure someone will try it in Rodinal or HC110 soon to see if it is useable with more conventional chemistry. I'm going to have a bash with the 35mm soon.

Martin

[David A. Goldfarb]

I got great results with it in 35mm long ago. Then I discovered larger cameras and haven't looked back.

[Diane Maher]

I shot some 4x5 at a workshop recently and liked my results. I have also shot it in 35 mm and 120 sizes and liked what I got. Bummer to hear about the discontinuation of TP. I have tried the TMax films and just don't like them. In the sheets of TMax that I have shot, I think that one or two didn't have pinholes in them.

[Kirk Keyes]

Brian,

Could you start another thread and give more info on using Tech Pan for petroglyphs?

THanks,. Kirk

[Annie M.]

Yes Brian.... any information about what developer they used would be sincerely appreciated..... (if I get the info this morning I can test it this afternoon!!) Thanks... Annie

[kthompson]

yeah, I'd be a little interested in the petroglyph info as well. I assume you're talking about the red sensitivity in tech pan and using filtration & development to extract detail? that's really the only thing I've ever used for tech pan for in my job--in the museum we do alot of copywork of old, stained & faded documents. I have used tech pan for this--using red filters and D19. I never really liked it that much as a copy film to be honest--I've used probably a thousand times as much TMX compared to tech pan. On the whole--across the archives & museum labs- I don't think anyone uses tech pan. I've never even seen it on our contracts. For years, it was pro copy, commercial film, ektapan, super-xx and plus-x. these were the films used in sheets for copywork. tech pan was used for quickie title slides and stuff where you might use kodalith as well--so it's not surprising that it would be discontinued sooner or later. infrared and UV photography are almost better for squeezing out lost detail in documents than tech pan ever was.

kind of like SO132. turned out nobody was really using it besides big commercial labs. they went digital and the market just disappeared.

[David Karp]

Regarding Tech Pan for petroglyphs:

John Sexton mentioned this technique at a workshop I attended a few years ago. If my memory is right, he said to rate the Tech Pan at 100 and develop it in T-Max developer as if it was T-Max 100. This resulted in greatly increased contrast, so the Petroglyphs really stood out from the rock.

I hope my memory is right. If not, I am sure others will correct me.

[Annie M.]

Thanks Dave! Usually I rate at 80 and use a cyan filter then do stand development in highly dilute HC110 for low contrast landscape... I'll give Sexton's method a try today for the petroglyphs.

Cheers, Annie

[Michael Rosenberg]

I have also used this film to improve the contrast when there are only one or two stops difference in a scene, or when I needed a +3 and did not want to suffer the grain. This is a very unusual film with superb charachteristics for rendering detail and edge sharpmenss. I have even used it, in a roll film back, when I have run out of sheet film when in the field. Nothing out there now can replace the film for the special qualities. I guess I will have to fill my freezer.....

Mike

[Francesco]

I used to shoot with a myriad of B&W films, TP included. Now I only shoot with 2, TP excluded, neither of them are made by Kodak. Good riddance to Kodak. They will rue the day they decide to get out of B&W film altogether. May it never come.

Francesco (www.cicoli.com)

[jantman]

I've never tried TechPan yet, though I most definately wanted (and want) to. I guess now I'll have to pick up a few rolls in 120.

Once I started shooting Ilford Pan F+ 50 (in Ilfosol-S) for my fine-grain rollfilm needs, I never saw a reason to try TechPan - the Pan F did everything I wanted, and I was never in a situation that needed finer grain.

I guess I'll pick up a few rolls, and throw some in the freezer... I wish I did that with AgfaPan 25.

[Jim Galli]

Won't be missed here. Far too fussy for me. And anyways I have about 5" X 1000+ feet of Aerial Panatomic X in the freezer. ASA 32 and the same grain structure that Kodak developed the tech pan from. Also red sensitive, and easily chopped into 5X7 lengths. I don't think Kodak will recover. Too many bad decisions early on in the digital conversion. Too top heavy and old fashioned to cope. A shame, another old American Standard suffering. At work we are currently finding a third of a million $ to buy 35mm Kodak Ektachrome that will vanish at the end of this year. Our conversion to digital is under way but we have much old machinery that we need to keep going for some years into the future.

[CXC]

I've shot TechPan in 120, cuz I like heavy contrast and sharp edges. Never could afford it in LF sizes. If the price goes down, rather than up (can you say Agfa Ultra?), after discontinuation, I might stock up. When was it last available in 5x7?

[Jon Mowe]

Nobody has mentioned that technical pan scans wonderfully. I have been using technical pan for this purpose exclusively for several years and had made it my standard film. It also has a look for both portraits and landscapes that is very unique and I will miss it greatly. The only thing that comes close to the scanning capabilities as far as indistinct grain is slide film (a distant cousin), but the quality is not even close.

[ohad_drucker]

I made a comparison between very old rolls of technical pan and new ones. I found that maybe technical pan film is not so dead after all, because the stocks of tech pan which are still available are still very usable ( I found stocks of 35mm and 70mm long roll, but I'm sure that most of the other formats are also still available ).

Check it out at:
http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/astro/techpan-drucker.pdf

[Donald Qualls]

I don't really understand the fuss about Tech Pan -- only in 120 is there a real loss; there are microfilm stocks in 35 mm (and 16 mm, and microfiche sizes that can be recut to 4x5) that do everything Tech Pan did except the extended red sensitivity and gas hypering (the latter a largely obsolete process anyway, with the reciprocity characteristics of Acros 100 being what they are and the film two stops faster).

I've been using microfilms for some time in subminiature, and have recently tried one of them in 35 mm -- it's certainly tempting to get a pack of the Imagelink J&C sells, because it looks to me as if it's close to making Tech Pan obsolete anyway (and isn't going anywhere, because microfilm is still selling in volume).

[paulr]

I read that when developed as a continuous tone film, tech pan actually lags behind tmx in MTF performance. Athough I don't know this for sure.

I also haven't used tech pan, so I don't know what its unique look is ... I'm guessing it's pretty unique, since it's designed as a high contrast film. a regular probably couldn't duplicate its tonal qualities. but does anyone rave about its tonal qualities?

[JW Dewdney]

For example, in their southwest workshops both John Sexton and Don Kirby teach a method for using it to photograph petroglyphs, where there often is no more a stop difference between the colors in the petroglyphs and the underlying rock.

Using tech pan for this application doesn't make ANY sense to me at all! It's far more red-sensitive than pretty much any film out there, apart from IR films. Most rock art is painted in a red ochre - so unless the rock was very dark... I don't see how that would work.

The KILLER APP for tech pan, though, IMHO - is astrophotography, believe it or not. You need multiple 20min plus exposures - but I've seen some PHENOMENAL stuff being done with medium format tech pan in a hasselblad.

[Arne Croell]

Using tech pan for this application doesn't make ANY sense to me at all! It's far more red-sensitive than pretty much any film out there, apart from IR films. Most rock art is painted in a red ochre - so unless the rock was very dark... I don't see how that would work.
This technique (TP in regular TMAX developer) for rock art photography was not about the color sensitivity, which could be taken care of by something like a bluegreen filter. It was about the ability of extreme contrast enhancement in development as pointed out above. Something like N+4 would not be possible with many standard films, and even then the grain would be very pronounced. I learned this in one of John's workshops, too, and it does work.

[Michael Gudzinowicz]

Now for the questions.....

Are there any other B&W films (with fairly normal contrast) that will yield the same (or close) results as Tech Pan (Resolution, Sharpness, etc.)?

T-Max 100 rated at 25-32 and developed in undiluted Microdol-X will equal Tech Pan in terms of sharpness and grain if used with an acid stop and hardening fixer to prevent grain clumping. Unlike Tech Pan, TMX/Microdol-X does not have a short linear exposure range and is much better suited for pictorial applications with a normal or long exposure scales. TMX doesn't have Tech Pan's tendency to produce "S" shaped H&D curves in the area of interest. Tech Pan could be manipulated to handle long scale scenes by bleaching (reducing) the latent image prior to development (Dave Kachel's method), but the alternative is easier.

For extreme contrast expansion, ortho lith films may be used with filters chosen for the film's response. Unfortunately, PCF and Ektapan also are no longer available, but slow fine grain films work well due to higher inherent contrast, and tolerate long development times without grain clumping.

[David Luttmann]

Using tech pan for this application doesn't make ANY sense to me at all! It's far more red-sensitive than pretty much any film out there, apart from IR films. Most rock art is painted in a red ochre - so unless the rock was very dark... I don't see how that would work.

The KILLER APP for tech pan, though, IMHO - is astrophotography, believe it or not. You need multiple 20min plus exposures - but I've seen some PHENOMENAL stuff being done with medium format tech pan in a hasselblad.

JW,

Tech Pan needed to be hypersensitized in order to have any use in astrophotography. One of the most well know astrophotographers using Tech Pan until its dying days was Martin Germano. He has since moved to CCD imaging as I did. Because of atmospheric seeing and tracking issues, there proved to be no advantage in resolution between higher end CCD imaging units from companies like Finger Lakes and SBIG and Tech Pan. The greater quantum effeciency and total lack of reciprocity failure, along with lack of noise on CCD imaging units pretty much ended the use of Tech Pan for astro imaging about 5 years ago.

[paulr]

T-Max 100 rated at 25-32 and developed in undiluted Microdol-X will equal Tech Pan in terms of sharpness ...

Has Kodak or anyone else published MTF curves and characteristic curves for tech pan? i've always been interested in checking them out.

[Oren Grad]

Has Kodak or anyone else published MTF curves and characteristic curves for tech pan? i've always been interested in checking them out.

Yes, you can find a very nice set showing the effect of many different developers at the back of Kodak Publication P-255 (http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/p255/p255.pdf).

[Andre Noble]

35mm Kodak Ektachrome that will vanish at the end of this year.

Exactly whick Kodak slide film are you referring to? Has there been an official announcement?

[paulr]

Yes, you can find a very nice set showing the effect of many different developers at the back of Kodak Publication P-255 (http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/p255/p255.pdf).

Thanks Oren.

That confirms what I'd heard ... as far as sharpness at high resolutions, you actually do better with tmax.

[Ed K.]

If one wishes to have higher than normal contrast, yet fine grained and very interesting B&W transparencies, TechPan reverses very well and has a really special look to it when reversed in dr5. I plan to use up my remaining 4x5 boxes of it that way, however I've been holding on to it for just the right set of subjects. The test stuff I got back from dr5 was truly interesting compared to some of the other films. So, the loss of Techpan is a loss of something like a snappier Scala ( okay, that's gone too ). Don't ask me why I like some black and white slides... I have my reasons.

I think you can still get some that is plenty fresh enough to use in 4x5 and perhaps even in 8x10.

[JW Dewdney]

JW,

Tech Pan needed to be hypersensitized in order to have any use in astrophotography. One of the most well know astrophotographers using Tech Pan until its dying days was Martin Germano. He has since moved to CCD imaging as I did. Because of atmospheric seeing and tracking issues, there proved to be no advantage in resolution between higher end CCD imaging units from companies like Finger Lakes and SBIG and Tech Pan. The greater quantum effeciency and total lack of reciprocity failure, along with lack of noise on CCD imaging units pretty much ended the use of Tech Pan for astro imaging about 5 years ago.

Yes - precisely. You would hyper it.

The success of this method over that is pretty subjective in my opinion. I, for one (perhaps the only one, but nonetheless...) find the tech pan results I've seen superior to any CCD imagers. Perhaps because I greatly prefer monochrome widefield stuff... but hey, that's me.

[JW Dewdney]

... The greater quantum effeciency and total lack of reciprocity failure, along with lack of noise on CCD imaging units pretty much ended the use of Tech Pan for astro imaging about 5 years ago.

Well - actually that's (factually) not QUITE true. CCDs generate HUGE amounts of noise. That's why they need SERIOUS cooling and then need to be multiplexed in software with multiple exposures.

[David Luttmann]

JW,

I can record with my SBIG camera, a monochrome image in 15 minutes that would takes 2 hours with Tech Pan, and that image will have no noise when I subtract a dark frame. Being that the camera head self cools, that is hardly an issue of extra work for me. The camera I have is a full frame sensor, and thus, I get the same field of view as one would with 35mm Tech Pan. Wide field astrophotography is thus a snap....not like the old days of shooting with tiny TI chips.

Now as to quantum efficiency....factually, it is completely true that CCD sensors leave film in the dust. Most CCD sensors have a QE of approx 80% in the visible spectrum, especially is HII and OIII regions, whereas film, even in a cold camera or when hypered, is lucky to achieve 5% because of reciprocity failure. That is the reason that CCD imaging has replaced film imaging.

[MIke Sherck]

JW,

I can record with my SBIG camera...

I'm curious: how much does your SBIG camera cost?

mjs

[David Luttmann]

I'm curious: how much does your SBIG camera cost?

mjs


Picked it up for $3800. Why?

[JW Dewdney]

JW,

I can record with my SBIG camera, a monochrome image in 15 minutes that would takes 2 hours with Tech Pan, and that image will have no noise when I subtract a dark frame. Being that the camera head self cools, that is hardly an issue of extra work for me. The camera I have is a full frame sensor, and thus, I get the same field of view as one would with 35mm Tech Pan. Wide field astrophotography is thus a snap....not like the old days of shooting with tiny TI chips.

Now as to quantum efficiency....factually, it is completely true that CCD sensors leave film in the dust. Most CCD sensors have a QE of approx 80% in the visible spectrum, especially is HII and OIII regions, whereas film, even in a cold camera or when hypered, is lucky to achieve 5% because of reciprocity failure. That is the reason that CCD imaging has replaced film imaging.

That's great. I'm happy for you Dave. It sounds like you're very pleased with your kit. I'm just sayin' - I'm not really interested in CCDs or color astrophotography. It's not really a 'look' I'm interested in. I'm sorry I even brought it up.

[David Luttmann]

That's great. I'm happy for you Dave. It sounds like you're very pleased with your kit. I'm just sayin' - I'm not really interested in CCDs or color astrophotography. It's not really a 'look' I'm interested in. I'm sorry I even brought it up.

Nothing to be sorry about.

That said, I do very little color work for astrophotography....mainly monochrome. I can't remember if I mentioned him before, but check out Martin Germano's web site. He did some beautiful work with Tech Pan. I'm just waiting for his update on the web site as he's juts shifted over to CCD work....not sure what camera though.

Regards

[Gary L. Quay]

Back to the Tech Pan issue: My best selling B&W image was recorded on Tech Pan. I'll miss it. I actually found it quite easy to work with.

--Gary

[ohad_drucker]

Or maybe there's no need to miss it. It's still here, a lot of people own (and sell) large stocks of old tech pan (including myself), and in a comparison I made I found out that the old tech pan is still the same tech pan we all remember.

http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/astro/techpan-drucker.pdf