Originally Posted by
Mark Crabtree
You're talking 4x5 I imagine? I have a bit somewhere, but my experience is more with Panatomic Aerial which is purported to be a very similar emulsion. It behaves like that for me, and is absolutely nothing like Panatomic. I think the name just indicated a speed class.
With that film I tried all the usual suspects of ordinary developers including the classic recommendation of very dilute HC110. I got usable results but nothing worked very well until I tried dilute xtol. I need to find my notes, but diluted at least 1:3, and that from my replenished stock. That combination finally gave me relatively normal contrast and a fairly usable speed of about EI 16, the same as often mentioned for Tech Pan at normal contrast. I can look up details if you are interested. The Photographers Formulary, or custom POTA developer might be better; I liked this because I was shooting 6.5 x 8.5 and 8x10 and went through a fair bit of developer. Plus, I had it.