Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Pan-F+ and Diafine


clinging
Originally uploaded by argusmaniac.
I have been using Ilford Pan-F, a relatively slow B&W film that is fine-grained. It's a nice film for landscapes, still-lifes, and some people like it for portraits. I have not tried it for that, yet. I had always rated it as an ISO 50 film, wand have been generally satisfied with my results Then I read somewhere -- perhaps on photo.net, that someone really liked it better when they shot it as an ISO of 32 (same as the old Panatomic-X) and developed it in Diafine.

I figured that I ought to try that. too. I shot this photo at Matthaei Botanical Gardens a few weeks ago, and finally developed it last night in Diafine. I really like the overall results. This was a quick scan done on a flatbed scanner, not my film scannner, and made into a duotone in Photoshop. I wanted to have the water blurred, and yet the branch in relatively good focus. I shot it with my Nikon FM2N on a tripod with a cable release and a 70-200mm Vivitar zoom lens. The exposure was probably something like f16 at 1/2 second. I never record that information. In any case, i am pleased with the results, and Diafine is becoming a real favorite developer that I am using frequently.

That's the beauty of film... you can get different effects depending on the type of film and speed that you use. Can't do that with digital without post-processing...

3 comments:

KirkT said...

Did you develop it still at 3+3 or did you pull it?

Wonderful photo.

mfophotos said...

Just straight 3+3! and thanks!

MikeR said...

Very nicely done. I have just discovered Diafine after reading comments on nelsonfoto and like it quite a bit. I think I still like Rodinal the best but that might change.