Yup. I do. And a lot of you are wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Last year, Kodak stopped producing Technical Pan Film. A b&w emulsion that can be used as a high contrast film with one developer (such as D-19) for pure black and white images, or as a lower-contrast pictorial film with a wide range of grays using Technidol developer (or some other common developers in weird dilutions).
Ahh, you are probably saying, "So it's just a b&w film..." yes it is, but one without any appreciable grain at big enlargements. It's also very slow -- ISO 25, which in today's high speed world, is glacially slow. But, that slow speed means 1/60 at f11 on a sunny day. Or, use tripod. What you get are amazing enlargements from a 35mm film that look as though they were shot in medium format.
The beauty of different films (especially b&w) is that each film has a different character, different spectral response, different grain -- and grain dependent on the developer used, as well as a "feel" that is SO different from digital. I am not a big fan of a lot of photoshop post-processing. The problem with digital b&w, is that every image has a sameness to it -- no grain, no "bite", no serendipity.
So, I am not anti-digital. But I am PRO- b&w film for a lot of good reasons.
The sad part is, Kodak stopped making TechPan, but lucky for me, I have about 300 feet of it in my fridge. So, I'll just keep shooting with it until it is eventually gone forever. I just found this interesting article on a small resurgence in b&w photography here. So, you see there IS an alternative to Tech Pan.
Image info: Shot in Livingston Co., MI, April, 2006, Nikon N8008, Nikkor 70-200 AF Zoom, Techpan developed in Technidol, per box instructions. Yes, I used a tripod.
