Gast
Hello,
Perhaps someone can help me out!
A while ago, I took some indoor shots with quite a high contrast range (window areas) on Pan F 120 roll film. I exposed at ISO 25/15 and developed in Rodinal 1:50 for 9 minutes using the Ilford agitation method.
I can only enlarge the negatives with a great deal of effort (dodging, partial re-exposure).
What did I do wrong? Should I have reduced the speed even further and developed for an even shorter time? Would this not have happened to me with Emofin, which I’m planning to try out these days?
I’ve been taking similar shots for a long time on APX 100, which I expose with one stop of overexposure. The film reacts much more forgivingly – at least, that’s my impression. I’ve never had such problems with FP4 either. This time, however, I wanted something with particularly fine grain. You do have to get the Pan F adapted to such lighting conditions.
Regards, CP
andreasbrigachtal
Hello CPD?!
The PanF has a very, very fine grain... but it produces a relatively hard look! Instead of Rodinal, I should have used Emofin, as that has a slightly balancing effect. However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the emulsion on low-speed films like the PanF is very thin. That means this film can’t reproduce as many grey tones! So it always produces a relatively hard look. If necessary, you can probably soften such films using special developers, such as those for Kodak Techpan. The stuff is called Technidol LC or something like that. Unfortunately, I have no experience with it!
Otherwise, it’s best to avoid backlighting or check beforehand what should be in focus! Otherwise, Duka’s work (dodging, etc.) is actually quite fun! ;)
Andreas
mau
I’ve had similar experiences with PanF when shooting high-contrast scenes.
Back then, I was using Negafin and the standard speed. One option would be to increase the dilution to 1+100 or even 1+200. Just make sure there’s the minimum amount of Rodinal required for the film in the solution. Then, of course, you can lower the speed a bit further.
Emmofin is, of course, particularly well-suited to such shooting situations; I perform almost all of the development in Emmofin.
For roll film, you could of course also use an FP4 or Agfapan Axp100, although the latter has a very nice detail in the highlights.
