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Tech Pan; alternate to technidol


alex_hawley

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I love using tech pan but hate developing with technidol. Using a

small tank, all too often I get streaks due (I believe) to the funky

agitation Kodak recommends. I keep HC110, Rodinol, and Xtol on

hand. Any suggestions for speed and times for these three? Or is

it worth it to get the Formularie's tech pand developer?

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I have developed Technical Pan in Rodinal by rating it at 6 ASA (yes, six!) and devving in Rodinal at 1:200, 20 C for 16 minutes. To avoid developer exhaustion ensure that you have at least 6 ml of Rodinal per roll of film, i.e. 6 ml Rodinal to 1200 ml with water. I used a 4-reel tank with just the one roll of film in it. Agitate once per minute.
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For high contrast situations, bright sun, Pota (at 25) works well as does

Divided D76 (at 80). With Technidol, hardly agitate at all. The streaks are

bromide drag and with this film very easy to get!!! Instead of inversions, just

slowly spin the tank once, every minute, and you will have much better

results!

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I've never used Rodinal with Technical Pan so can't comment there, compared to Technidol my subjective sense is that the grain size is perhaps the merest fraction larger with TechXactol but much. much "tighter" and more precisely delineated, giving a crisper overall feel to the print. Having said that I can still only perceive the grain in out-of-focus mid tones with a x10 loupe or at 100% enlargement of a 4000 dpi scan.

 

The real revolution however is in the tonality, creamy smooth right across the range at ISO 40 on a bright day with thin cloud cover.

 

I posted an illustrative image a few weeks ago on this site but my web scanning abilities fail to do the developer justice, in combination with first rate technique and equipment you're genuinely challenging the image quality of larger formats.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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