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Different ways of processing Kodak Tech Pan


willscarlett

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Hi John-Paul.

 

Sadly, he is me, and the effect looks like edge effects, coupled with extremely shallow dof from shooting at f1.2. The edges that are closer to the plane of focus don't seem to exhibit such extreme effects. It's an interesting phenomenon, and one I haven't seen so obviously before. You can see some of the same effect near my hair/background edge. It's like a diffuse Mackie line. I was wondering if anyone would notice. I kind of like the way it separates the subject from the background, but it might be a bit much. Incidentally, the image as presented represents about 1/3 of a 35mm frame. TP users can crop aggressively with impunity.

 

Jay

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A year or two ago there was a guy who posted something on Usenet about shooting TP at ASA 400 -- for pictorial use, continuous tone -- and getting exellent results, using a super-secret developer that he'd worked up.

 

He refused to divulge the formula (which is no problem for me, as I likewise treat some of my own IP in that manner), but still, I'd be interested in knowing if anyone has duplicated this feat.

 

He showed an example on his website, and it really did look good.

 

The "occam's razor" answer would be that he was obviously pulling our collective legs, but I don't think this is the case. He wasn't touting his soup, and in fact only mentioned it in passing when asked about the photo, as I recall. Sadly, what I do not recall is his name or email address, although I think this should be available via google if anyone is sufficiently curious. I don't advocate such a search though as it's going to be a dead end -- the guy won't talk about his stuff, period.

 

I do not doubt that he's accomplished it. I've seen things equally astounding (with respect to photographic chemistry) with my own eyes (proprietary, of which I cannot speak further -- but, no less impressive than tweaking ASA 400 out of Tech Pan). I know that "the impossible" sometimes actually does happen. In this case, I'd like to know of a way to reliably MAKE it happen for my small stash of frozen Tech Pan.

 

Along similar lines, does anyone know of a developer/dilution/time-temp that can be used to obtain decent pictorial results with Kodalith? I know it's been done, and I presume that the answer would be to use the same sort of techniques used for microfilms (Tech Pan, High Contrast Copy, Copex, etc.), but with different dilutions, times, etc.

 

I have a fairly decent amount (in terms of "for my own use over the next few years) of Kodalith in 35mm and 8x10 (which I'd cut to smaller sheet format), which I'd like to use for pictorial use. I am not interested in super-high-contrast stuff (at all), so I won't be shooting any of it until I find a means to use it for continous tone use.

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"ASA 400 out of Tech Pan"

 

Either he's having fun trolling, or sounds like an extreme push equivalent to ISO 400 film being pushed to 125,000 or 250,000. At these pushes you must know how to develop for the bazillions of light situations to get anything resembling an image or just simplify everything to bare bones and use just one type of light. Quite limiting for almost anyone. Or is he claiming the latitude of a general purpose fast film?

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No, this was definitely not Tech Pan with a rocket up its tailpipe and concrete-hard contrast. The photo he showed had beautiful tonality. It was as I remember it a portrait of his newborn baby, with a nice grayscale.

<p>

I don't think he was trolling, either. I've been 'round Usenet for about a twenty years or so (I witnessed the <i>creation</I> of "trolling", by the oddballs from "alt.syntax.tactical" -- Andrea Chen and company -- quite a few years ago), and this guy just didn't even come close to fitting the pattern. If anything, he acted like he wished he hadn't even mentioned it, like he'd let slip something he wasn't supposed to disclose.

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