I bought a few rolls of this a while back from the fine folks at FOTO-R3 in Spain, and I shot a roll on our Bay Area (Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, California) vacation in August. I was underwhelmed by the previous roll I had shot, but I really liked how this one turned out. Our friend Cooking Film has used this film quite a bit, with inconsistent results. Given that I can’t find a straight answer out there as to what film this actually is (it is obviously a rebadge film with fake-ass Neopan 400-style branding), it might be a few different films. We’ll see. I’ve ordered up some more rolls so I can have a better look at it. Meanwhile, here are some shots that I find interesting and you probably will not. (Is anyone else here old enough to have sat through a slide show of vacation photos? With actual slides and a slide projector?)
Please, PLEASE add a comment if you have any experience with this film or any background on it. It’s still a mystery, but I’m definitely warming up to it. I really liked the grain in this roll. I think I underexposed by 1-1.5 stops which probably enhances the grain. The development time I took straight out of the Massive Dev Chart, so I’ll play with that some more when I get some more of the film.
RECIPE:
Three rolls (the other two were Tri-X/Arista Premium 400) in a three-roll Paterson daylight tank.
1 minute rinse in 68F water
HC-110 dilution B (1:31) (I used Legacy Pro’s L-110 which is a lot less syrupy but otherwise identical) 7 minutes
1 minute initial agitation (1 inversion/second); 3 inversions per minute afterward
1 minute stop bath
9 minutes (!) fix (fixer’s almost dead, didn’t feel like mixing more up)
1 minute rinse
1 minute Perma-Wash
1 minute final rinse
1 minute PhotoFlo 200
hang to dry 2 hours
try to get NikonScan to work
give up until tomorrow
By the way, and I’m probably repeating myself, but I always drop my film scraps (from when you trim the leader to load the reels) into an inch of fixer in a graduated cylinder while I’m tempering the water and setting everything up. I hit a count-up timer when I do it. I swirl the fixer every 30 seconds. When the scraps are clear, I look at the timer. I fix for double that time. Even fairly exhausted fixer might still work, given enough time.
Amazing results with the Protopan! The best I’ve seen.
Bowing to you my friend.
I think I must have gotten the good roll!
All the credit is to you. One of my friends got decent (and consistent) results using Uncle Mort’s Soup (or something) but your results are much more smooth, it looks like Tmax! :)