Re: [APML] TP for terrestrial work

["Joseph O'Neil" <joneil@multiboard.com>]

At 19:58 7/9/02 -0700, you wrote:

>I've been trying to use Technical Pan in a Pentax 67II camera
>on terrestrial subjects to get the kinks out of the process
>before moving into celestrial work.

-snip-

         Tech pan is strange stuff, and not only do most labs not knwo how 
to process it, but most people don't knwo how to shoot it daytime or 
nighttime.
         Also, most commercial labs will butcher tech pan processing.  heck 
most labs cannot even process any plain old B&W film anymore, let alone 
tech pan.  Mind you, I am biased, as I do cusotm processign for a fee, so i 
am not totally indifferent here.
         Anyhow, to processs tech pan, dyatime shots, at home, do the 
following...
         1) expose at 25 ASA/ISO.
         2) use a spot meter, or meter off the shadows in your daylight 
scence, and expose for the shadows.   When shooting colour film in 
dyalight, you use and incident light meter - you meter the "light in the 
air" so to speak.   But for any B&W film, you meter the light  *reflected* 
off a surface, not the incident light.  Metering incident light will always 
underexposre your B&W film.  Never worry about over exposing B&W film, I 
find almost every brand of B&W film works best overexposed and then you 
compensate for development.  Example, I'll shot Tri-X at 100 and 200 ASA on 
a regular basis.
         3) Do not use D-19 for daytime shots, it is a vey high contrast 
developer,a nd almost any B&W film will come out lookign liek lithographic 
film.  stay away form HC-110 and tech pan too, it can be done, but I do not 
like the results.
         4) Use technidol for extremely fine grain - such as repro work, 
but plain old D-76 or Xtol will work fine on tech pan
         5) follow the agitation instructions carefully with tech pan
         6) wheever possible, use distilled water for your developign 
solution.  Developers are constantly being reformulated a little bit here 
nad there - or so it seems to me - moslty to comply with envirmental 
standards, etc.  I find variations in the quality of tap water plays havoc 
with soem developers.  Xtol is horrible that way.  So use distilled water 
to mix up your base developer - this includes your D-19 and hypered tech 
pan.  It just removes one more variable form the entire processing system, 
and allows greater consistancy.

         That's about it.  It is neat stuff.  Finally, because of the 
extended red sensitivity, tech pan has a different look to it than say 
Tri-X or HP5.  That is part of it's charm
joe




http://www.oneilphoto.on.ca
http://www.multiboard.com/~joneil
"Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem"


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