Thanks for reading my first film review,
A while ago when I was backpacking in Thailand and Vietnam I got for the first time in contact with Ilford Pan 100 and 400 film. Though I did read about this film I never had the change to test this film.
At that moment I was shooting with Ilford FP4Plus and HP5Plus, so I was sticking with that film to achieve a uniform look for my series of photo’s. Shown here under.
Ilford FP4 Plus developed in X-Tol
Nevertheless I was quite curious about this film so I grabbed 2 Ilford Pan 400 as a small present for a friend of mine who also shoots, Floris Nijensikkens (www.nijensikkens.nl) for him to try out.
Funny to hear from him within one week he was totally hooked on that film, figuring out where to buy it.
In the past I tried a lot of films and developer combinations during my study at the School of Fine Arts Minerva Groningen The Netherlands, the University of Fine Arts in Poznań Poland, during my traveling China and short contact in Weimar at the Bauhaus-Universität.
The advantage was that during this period I got into contact with international students of different nationalities, from Chinese students for example I was getting in contact with the so-called “Shanghai GP3” film, very nice and smooth tones, unfortunately not really available or known in my country where I was studying. Same counts for Foma film, when I was in Poland, never heard of that film then. Until then I shot mainly Kodak and Ilford. Nothing wrong with it, though it’s always nice to try sometimes something else.
Like in drawing with charcoal versus graphite, or painting with acrylic versus oil, both are in a sort way the same but also very different in expression of the final image. Keep in mind like paintings different type of paint will result a different technical result in the painting the image itself is the most important thing
A sidetone though for the beginner, my advice would be stay with one film and developer and learn to master it before you switch to the other one. The advantage is, is that start you know how the film behaves and its typical behaviour. The disadvantage is, that maybe you stay with one film while other films could suit you better. I know this sounds like a contradiction way of thinking, but zigzagging from the beginning with films and developers will result most of the time in disappointments. But after you master the beginning then the next step is to develop your own handwriting and the choice of film and developer can help thereby.
So further no due, here a review of a film I never shot, Ilford Pan 100 and 400.
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To make the test as honest as possible I used 2 identical camera's and glass, 50mm 1.4 AF-D (Yes I know in this case im a littlebit OCD), though that can also be of my other background as I am also a laboratory technician, so to make a test as possible clean as possible, loose the factors that make things unreliable, and making the test as honest as possible.
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Shown here, the Ilford Pan 400 has for me at first glance the typical ilford feel, it’s not as flat as Rollei RPX film, though over springy it isn’t, so for an flatbed scanner I think it’s still an easy film to scan.
Here a shot, of ilford pan 400 developed in kodak xtol stock solution. Ilford didn't support any data of this film how to develop it in X-Tol, so I was on my own, I decided to treat this film as an HP5, themes where 8 min and 30 sec, turned out quite good.... Though it isn't an Delta 400 film, it reminds me of Rollei RPX 400 ish...
Maybe a good reason to do an total comparison of side to side photo's...
Nevertheless the atmosphere is quite nice, I did us min this case quite modern glass(Nikkor 50mm AF-D) maybe it will get better when using "vintage" glass.
Ilford Pan 400, developed in Xtol stock solution for 8 min and 30 sec