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  #1  
Old 6th September 2020, 06:13 PM
TonyZ TonyZ is offline
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Default Ilford Pan F, not plus.

Hi All,

I was wandering through an antique shop in Arundel when I can across a film camera shop on the top floor.

Really nice chap! Bought a bulk film loader and a tin of 17m of Ilford Pan F, looked sealed but unknown as to how it was kept.

I can't seem to find any info on dev times as my searches seem to return info only Pan F+

Does anyone have any experience on developing this film? I know I'll need to play around with it as it expired in 2003 by the looks of it! I'm just looking for a rough starting point to see if it's even worth using.

Many thanks,

TZ

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  #2  
Old 6th September 2020, 07:51 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Tony I have just has a look at Ilford Photomemorabilia. Always worth a look for Ilford history and Pan F Plus superseded Pan F in 1992 so I'd be surprised if a Pan F film even it it was the last of the bunch had an expiry date some 11 years after its discontinuation which yours has if you are sure this is the expiry date

Is this important you may be asking yourself and the answer is I cannot be sure but it might be in terms of its age so a re-check on real age might be important real, So to that end it might be helpful if you could gives us a pic of the bulk roll container

If we assume it is the last of the Pan F bunch then it is nearly two decades old and consideration may have to be given to loss of film speed due to age.

Some say that roughly this is one stop per decade so worst case scenario this film is now EI 12 when exposing.

As far as developing is concerned then as far as I can ascertain the film is much the same as Pan F Plus so I'd go with Pan F Plus times for developing.

I'd shoot a short roll at EI 12, 25 and box speed of 50 taking 3 pics of the same scene. So say 4 scenes in a 12 frame film then use the current Pan F times for box speed processing and see what comes out

Best of luck and lets us know how it goes

Mike
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Old 6th September 2020, 08:27 PM
TonyZ TonyZ is offline
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Hi Mike,

Looks like you're right, there are two labels on the bottom neither have a particularly clear date on.

On one I can make out 03 and the other 83, so seems like it's from 1983, a good year, film is like wine right?

Good advice on the testing, I'll give it a go.

Many Thanks.
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Old 6th September 2020, 08:45 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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If it is 1983 then I might be tempted to go down as far as 6 although hopefully this won't be necessary to get an OK pic

Maybe until the end of this month EI 6 on bright days will remain OK at say f5.6 or f4. If after processing it is clear that it requires EI 6 then I'd be tempted to use a wide angle lens if possible if there are shots that require a large or largish DoF

I look forward to learning how you get on

One last thing which given you will want to see your results ASAP may be redundant here is that Pan F+ and presumably Pan F also would appear to suffer from latent image fade much quicker than most other Ilford films so processing within a week or so of taking is likely to be sensible

Mike
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Old 7th September 2020, 08:17 AM
MikeHeller MikeHeller is online now
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As recently as 2016 I used up some PanF or PanF+ film that was dated as I recall 1993 or earlier and I developed it as PanF+ in Xtol (1+1) for the times recommended by Digital Truth:

https://www.digitaltruth.com/devchar...=C&TimeUnits=D

I did so rating the film at both ISO 50 and ISO100 with perfectly printable resulting negatives. They were well out of date when I was given them (ca 2008) and while I stored them in a freezer, I do not know how they were stored prior to then.

So do not give up on it but more rigorously testing it might be wise.

Mike
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Old 7th September 2020, 02:23 PM
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skellum skellum is offline
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Personally, I wouldn't take a photograph I cared about on film which was almost 40 years out of date.

We're all different, so each to their own.
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Old 9th September 2020, 11:18 AM
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MKCarberry MKCarberry is offline
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If you do use it I'd love to see the results.
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  #8  
Old 10th September 2020, 07:51 PM
TonyZ TonyZ is offline
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Sorry for the slow reply, took some pics a couple of days ago and have only just had time to develop them this evening.

I didn't have any xtol as suggested, only hydrofen and a little Rodinal.

Decided to go with stand development in Rodinal 1+100 as I saw some good results from another photographer online.

The test negs turned out great. I've only looked with my specs but the ones taken at box speed seem to be spot on as the ones taken at +1 stop seem overexposed, obviously the +2 more so.

I don't have access to my darkroom for printing at the moment until my eldest goes back to uni next week.

Any as best as I can tell it hasn't lost any sensitivity so could well have been at the back of a freezer for the last 35 years.

Don't know if I can post up pictures of the negs, I quite like the idea this forum keeps it to scanned printed photos. Anyway still need to build a lightbox to get a snapshot with my phone. Hopefully get back into my darkroom next week.

Seems like a lucked out again. 😊

Thanks for your help and interest,

Regards,

Tony Z


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  #9  
Old 10th September 2020, 09:23 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Good news Tony ad quite a surprise. I think if the film is Pan F then even Ilford might be interested in your success. Your find of the bulk roll and your success is possibly the kind of thing that Ilford might even want to mention in its website

As far as posting pics of the negs is concerned then it's the moderators call but as the subject was latent image fade then this concerns a potential problem with a negative so on that basis and for our benefit I see no reason why you could not take a picture of one or two on the negs to demonstrate the box speed and EI 25 and EI 12 speed negatives

These would be legitimate pics of negs as negs which I think the rules allow

What I believe the rules forbid is the reversal of negs to positives as if they were the equivalent of darkroom prints which they are not

However as I say this is a mod's call

Mike
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Old 10th September 2020, 10:04 PM
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Yep - neg scans are good when educational!
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