John Sexton used it when a scene needed a +2 expansion or more. His photographs using that method look pretty good to me.
John Sexton used it when a scene needed a +2 expansion or more. His photographs using that method look pretty good to me.
“You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you.”
― Alexander Den Heijer, Nothing You Don't Already Know
Plus 2 would represent a very low contrast scene to begin with; so that kind of thing would fit into the native scale of TechPan decently, given proper development. But you have to keep in mind that John was at times contracted to experiment with and promote Kodak materials specifically.
Way far back...mid 1970's I think - I did a bit of beta-testing for the H+W Control guy, who supplied me with a few 35mm rolls of his film and special developer. Never really took off for him...and much later I made use of Tech-Pan for doing line copy work, often to use stripped on to a 4x5 negative with rubylith tape. Also worked well for copying otherwise low contrast continuous tone illustrations. Never could really get it to work for my usual landscapes...even with various low contrast developers.
Thing is...I think that the H+W film and developer combo. actually came much closer to succeeding, for continuous tone daylight work, than did the later TechPan.
I wonder what ever happened to the H+W guy. What was his name? Bob S. do you remember?
Tech Pan was originally designed for film images like this:
https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/...00292.000.html
Tech Pan data sheet:
https://bioskoplab.files.wordpress.c...ch_pan2415.pdf
~Extended Red Sensitivity and more~
Back when 35mm roll film was THE most common means of photographic recording more than a few 35mm B&W film folks became obsessed with "fine grain" and "sharpness". This resulted in popularity of stuff like uber fine grain film, uber fine grain developers and all that and home dark rooms were common enough among 35mm film folks interested in going after uber fine grain, uber sharp and all that..
Some discovered no matter how "fine grain" 35mm marketing hype became, the fine grain obsession was essentially hammered by making sheet film or 120 roll film images.
Could Tech Pan be used for "Pictorial" images, absolutely. Are there better films and film sized for Pictorial images, absolutely. Question is, what are the image goals and how much effort, resources, involvement, testing and ... is required to achieve these image goals.
Bernice
I think the red sensitivity best helped me in astrophotography... Stars usually have some red in them so would show up well, and the background dark blue + contrast would hold down the haze & sky... A good match...
I had a massive copy project where I bought a 150ft roll of 35mm Tech Pan, but did side by side tests with APX 100, and didn't see much of a difference in grain between, and had a more manageable scale when wet printing 8X10 prints, so still have most of the roll of bulk film somewhere, but would use it for astrophotography in a heartbeat...
I was thinking then that if shooting a dark red filter for telephotography, that the filter factor would be minimal due to the extended red sensitivity...
Steve K
"Technical Pan belongs to a group of films produced in 35mm format and having ultrahigh resolution. This property is the result of a monodisperse emulsion having extremely small silver halide grains, which goes hand in hand with high contrast."
https://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/E5369/e5369.html
Bernice
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