Kentmere Pan 400 - part 2

 

Kentmere Pan 400 in medium format

When I wrote my original post on Kentmere Pan 400 in 2019, it was then available in 35mm only; in December 2022, in a surprise announcement from Harman, the film's manufacturer, that the two black and white Kentmere emulsions were now to be available in medium format, having previously been available in 35mm only. I did write in my original post three years ago that "having been around for many years [Kentmere Pan 400] is unlikely to suddenly be offered in medium and large format, although this is not impossible: Ilford's Ortho Plus film, a niche sheet film emulsion for decades, has just been introduced in 35mm and 120." As described in the recent post on its slower-speed companion, Kentmere Pan 100, there's a logic to Harman complementing their Ilford brand with lower-priced films in medium format, to compete–in particular, it seems–with cheaper films such as Fomapan 100 and 400. The original post on Kentmere Pan 400 was written to compare the film with Ilford Pan 400, which I had been told was going to be discontinued (although at the time of writing, this film is still available), and one can see the logic in rationalising Harman's budget film lines. 

After the announcement of the film's new availability in medium format, I bought a couple of rolls and used the film, cut down, for last week's 127 Day (I used the 16mm off-cut in a subminiature camera, but this suffered from successive overlapping exposures due to issues with the film advance, and so not worth illustrating here); I shot the other roll on New Year's Day, with the Ica Icarette II/L. The reason for choosing this particular medium format camera was simply not having used it for a while. As with the comments in the last post on 127 Day, with overcast winter weather, a one-stop push might have improved the contrast of the negatives; the Icarette's Tessar lens–99 years old–is uncoated, and the somewhat hazy conditions were no doubt emphasised in the results thanks to the low-contrast of the uncoated lens.

Ica Icarette II with Kentmere Pan 400

The image above, directed towards the sun, just about discernible on the day through the clouds, shows this quite well (thanks to the weather conditions, there may also–just–have been some haze as a remainder of the fireworks a few hours before). In the original post on Kentmere Pan 400, I did test both pushing and pulling the film, and used Rodinal (or a Rodinal clone) and Ilfotec LC29 for developers, and in particular, having used Rodinal for many years, I was familiar with it and what to expect; with the medium format Kentmere Pan 400, I used Kodak HC-110 (at dilution B here), a developer new to me: with one or two rolls of film and a new developer, there wasn't the opportunity to work out how exactly to tailor the developer to exposure to get the particular result I wanted–or to use a different camera, which might have produced better results for these couple of rolls of Kentmere Pan 400 in medium format (as with the roll shot on 127 Day, the low contrast of the negatives was notable). As with my summary in the original post from just over three years ago, I feel there's nothing really distinctive about Kentmere Pan 400: I ended by writing then that the film is "a perfectly good, competitively priced, all-round 35mm black and white film with a certain flexibility in exposure and development"–which it is, but also now very welcome in medium format too.

Ica Icarette II with Kentmere Pan 400

Ica Icarette II with Kentmere Pan 400

Ica Icarette II with Kentmere Pan 400

Ica Icarette II with Kentmere Pan 400

Recent Glass Plate Work - part one

Electricity Substation, MPP Micro-Technical Mk VI, Ilford G.30 Chromatic Plate

Having had some success with using a number of different types of vintage glass plates, I wanted to design a project to use them for. These glass plates are a finite resource, although they do appear frequently in online auctions (photographic plates are still manufactured, but only for very specialist applications, and are prohibitively expensive). So, to use those plates I've already collected, I decided to undertake an ongoing project of urban night photography. There are a couple of examples in my post on Ilford G.30 plates, although it was only when photographing the disused cinema that the idea began to formulate.

Mimosa Porträtyp-Antihalo plate test

With the exception of the Ilford G.30 plates, most of the plates I've used are from previously opened boxes, which does mean that there is a chance that contents may have been exposed to light at some stage in their history. This has only been the case with the Mimosa Porträtyp-Antihalo and Kodak B 40 plates, and it hasn't been all of the plates in the box. The Mimosa plates have nothing to date them securely, but these could be as old as 1930s-40s (the box says these are "Made in Germany" and presumably date from before East and West Germany). I shot a test of these, which did come out with heavy fogging, and a number of Kodak plates. I have been systematically testing the plates in my Icarette L with successive exposures to a get a rough idea of the exposure needed.

Kodak B 40 Fine-Grain Regular plate test

Kodak B.4 Half-Tone plate test

Some of the plates were originally for specialist applications, such as the Kodak B.4 Half-Tone plates, which as the name suggests, are high-contrast; many of the plates are not panchromatic, meaning that they can be loaded under a safelight, useful when there are loose plates in a box, making it easier t to determine which is the emulsion side. The safelight for the B.4 Half-Tone plates is given as 'OB'. Although OB doesn't appear on Kodak's safelight data sheet, all the other 'O' series safelights are yellow. Considering the given safelight for these plates would be yellow, I made a guess that these are blue-sensitive only and loaded the plate under a red safelight. (Given my limited experience of different Kodak plates, panchromatic plates have a 'P' prefix, orthochromatic, 'O', so it would make sense for blue-sensitive to have 'B' - although I have found nothing to confirm this).

Kodak P 300 Special Rapid Panchromatic and P.1600 Panchro-Royal plates

Two previously unopened boxes of plates I've made tests from are Kodak P 300 Special Rapid Panchromatic and P.1600 Panchro-Royal plates. As sealed boxes, these have information sheets inside, useful for the original meter settings and developing times: I've posted the P 300 Special Rapid Panchromatic sheet and the P.1600 Panchro-Royal sheet on Flickr. I've generally been using a starting point of increasing the exposure by 1 or 2 stops for the tests to compensate for the age of the plates, then the succesive exposures provide a more accurate exposure index to shoot with. Although both boxes were sealed, the Panchro-Royal plates have not aged as well as the Special Rapid plates, which are 'tropically hardened': this may or may not have an effect on the longevity of the emulsion.

Kodak P 300 Special Rapid Panchromatic plate test

Kodak P.1600 Panchro-Royal plate test

Shooting them at night adds an extra layer of difficulty and not only in terms of getting the exposure right (I haven't touched on reciprocity law failure). The shot of the ghost train below proved hard to focus, even with the lens wide open at f4.5: the image on the ground glass screen was very dull, simply because the scene was at a considerable distance from any streetlights. Stopping down to f5.6, I calculated a ten minute exposure. Using a smaller aperture with greater depth of field would have meant that the accuracy of focus would be less critical, but this would have given much longer exposure times. The 4x5 G.30 Chromatic glass plates (shot with my MPP Micro-Technical Mk VI camera) are still the best plates I've used, and both subjects using them on this post were well-lit, in terms of night photography.

Branches and Shadows,  MPP Micro-Technical Mk VI, Ilford G.30 Chromatic plate

Concrete Stairwell, Wallace Heaton Zodel with Kodak O.250 plate

Ghost Train, Ica Icarette L with Kodak O.250 plate

Ica Icarette II/L

Ica Icarette II/L

Ica was a relatively short-lived Dresden-based camera manufacturer, formed in 1909 by the merger of four companies: Hüttig AG; Kamerawerk Dr. Krügener; Wünsche AG; and Carl Zeiss Palmos AG. Its name is derived from Internationale Camera A.-G. and it's often written ICA, however as written on the cameras themselves, in advertisements and other documentation, the company's name appears as Ica. Ica was one of the 'name-giving' partners when it merged with Ernemann, Goerz and Contessa-Nettel to create Zeiss-Ikon in 1926.

Ica continued many camera models from its constituent companies, but the Icarette line of elegant folding cameras was an entirely new range, using a number of different rollfilm formats, from 127 to 116. The Ica Icarette II (named the Icarette L in US Ica/Zeiss Ikon catalogues) takes 6x9cm size images on 120 film, but it's a dual format camera (as are some of the other Icarette models), meaning that it also takes plates. This makes it a model 500/2: there is an Icarette II which takes rollfilm only, with a model number of 500/1; the Icarette I was a horizontal folding camera in the 6x6 negative format. The Icarette II 500/2 has a section of the camera back with the orange window–and a separate pressure plate–that can be removed and replaced with a ground glass screen and plateholders for 6.5x9cm (or 2 1/2x3 1/2 inch) glass plates (my first post on glass plates discusses the differences between metric and imperial sizes). When loading rollfilm, the camera back removes entirely, and the spool holders on each side are hinged to swing out for ease of loading. The focus scale has to be adjusted to either 'P' for plates or 'F' for film as the focal plane changes depending on which format used. This has a notch for infinity, which the lensboard pulls out to, the Icarette being non-self-erecting, as self-erecting designs for folding cameras only became common in the 1930s. There's also a handwritten focus scale on the other side of the bed for the Distar lens attachment.

Ground-glass back removed, and plateholder inserted.

The first Icarettes were produced in 1919, with the II/L model appearing c.1925. My camera is from early in the Icarette II's production. The serial number on its lens dates it to 1924; interestingly the shutter's serial number appears to be from before 1920. As was common with many folding cameras, the Icarette was offered with a range of lenses depending on price. My example has the top-of-the-range Carl Zeiss Jena f4.5 105mm Tessar lens.

Icarette L lens detail

The above detail shows the Tessar lens in a dial-set Compur shutter; the shutter settings of T for 'Time', B for 'Bulb' and 'I' for 'Instant' suggest the camera was produced for export; I have a contemporaneous Voigtländer Avus with a Compur shutter with 'Z' 'D' 'M' marked on it, for 'Zeit', 'Moment', and 'Dauer' (duration). Unlike the later rim-set Compur shutters, the exposure mode is selected on the small wheel to the left of the lens in the picture above and the shutter speeds are set independently on the dial at the top.

The camera also features double extension bellows, and a rising front. I have found the double extension bellows can cause a problem when focused from infinity to any moderate distance, as most of the length of the bellows remain in the camera's body unless drawn out manually, otherwise they tend to occlude the edges of the frame widthways, blurring them. For a viewfinder, there's the brilliant finder adjacent to the lens, a wire frame sportsfinder, which has an unusual profile to fit around the shutter and permit access to its controls, and the ground glass screen when using plates.

One of the curious features of my Icarette is it has "The Westminster" impressed into the leather on the back of the ground glass screen hood, the rollfilm back and inscribed between the knobs of the lensboard base. This could be The Westminster Photographic Exchange: much like my Baldalux camera rebadged by Wallace Heaton, presumably the Icarette was sold in the UK by The Westminster Photographic Exchange. There's a camera very like the Icarette II in one of the company's advertisments, 'The Westminster' can be discerned on leather on the camera, although on closer inspection, I believe the camera depicted in the illustrations is actually a Contessa Nettel Cocarette (identifiable by the shape of the wireframe finder, catch on the camera body, and the vertical stand).

Although I also have a Wallace Heaton plate camera in 6.5x9cm size, I've only used the Icarette II to shoot my glass plates in this size. Fortunately, my Icarette still had both the ground glass screen and the rollfilm back and pressure plate, as well as a leather wallet with four Ica plate holders and a case. As well as plates, I've also shot a few rolls of film; the Icarette II is not the most convenient of my medium format folding cameras - but possibly has the best lens. The Tessar lens, nearly ninety years old, performs very well. In the examples below, the photograph of the London 2012 Olympic Village in particular shows the good edge-to-edge sharpness of the lens.

Hackney Downs, Rollei RPX 400 developed in R09 One Shot (Rodinal) 1+25 for 11m15s at 18˚C

London 2012 Olympic Village,  Fomapan 200, developed in Rodinal 1+50; 8mins at 20 degrees C.

Ilford R10 glass plate, stand developed in Rodinal 1+100

Kodak O.250 glass plate, stand developed in Rodinal 1+100

The Icarette II was continued by Zeiss Ikon long after Ica's merger into the new conglomerate. This advert shows that it was produced until at least 1937, while none of the other Icarette models appear: perhaps as a dual format camera, the Icarette II filled a unique niche in Zeiss Ikon's range.

Sources/further reading
Icarette models & Ica pages on Camera-Wiki
Ica chronology (in French)
Ica pages on Early Photography

More Glass Plates

Kodak O.250 Rapid Ortho Metallographic Glass Plates

Following the successful results exposing and developing old Ilford R.10 glass plates, I wanted to test another box, again previously opened. These are Kodak O.250 Rapid Ortho Metallographic Glass Plates and, according to the Early Photography website, Kodak's Rapid Ortho emulsion was only available in plates. These are 6.5x9cm plates, slightly larger than the imperial size of the Ilford plates (the small handwritten label on the box states: "Do not fit 3 1/2x2 1/2 single slides"). The box is also inscribed with a marker pen '28/6/62'. The plates in this box, unlike the Ilford plates, are wrapped in fours, with the central pair held together by paper runners. It wasn't clear which way around the plates were facing: whether the central pair were facing, and the other two facing outwards, which was the choice I made when loading the plate holders. This turned out to be the wrong decision, as the emulsion on the central pair faces outwards, the outer plates facing inwards. As a result, in the plate holders, the anti-halation backing faced the lens. I shot these plates at the same rating as the Ilford plates, roughly 12 ISO. The plates do not have a speed rating other than the name O.250, but looking at the information on Early Photography, it looks as though these plates may have been as slow as 16 ISO originally.

Kodak O.250 Rapid Ortho Plate, loaded back to front, shot in Icarette L

When I took the plates out of the holders in the darkroom under the safelights (these plates being orthographic) I realised my mistake. However, I went on to develop the plates, using the same method as the Ilford R.10 plates, using Rodinal diluted 1:100, stand developing for an hour. The results show that the anti-halation backing transmits enough light to give a fairly good image on the emulsion, but the backing wasn't a smooth, even layer (which I could see before developing), with the effect of creating mottled patches which also diffuse the focus in these areas. The negatives are quite thin but the plates are clearly usable, and perhaps shot the right way around the negatives would be sufficiently dense to use at 12 ISO.

Kodak O.250 Rapid Ortho Plate, loaded back to front, shot in Icarette L

Edit: 28/04/13

I recently bought another box of Kodak O.250 plates, and this had an information leaflet inside. It gives the speed of the plates as 8 ASA for daylight, and just 3 for tungsten, but it isn't clear whether the plates are from before or after the black & white speed rating change of 1960: if from before, then the original rating of the plates would have been 16 ISO. Either way, the plates have lost very little sensitivity despite being fifty years old. It provides filter factors and developing times for D61a and D76 (Ilford's ID11). The leaflet describes O.250 plates as being:

recommended for photographing biological sections, metallurgical and mineralogical work, spectography and macrography and clinical photography where neither red sensitivity nor high speed is necessary. It is also suitable for commercial, landscape and architectural photography and for studio portraiture by daylight.

Kodak O.250 Plate leaflet (front)

Kodak O.250 Plate leaflet (back)

Ilford R.10 Glass Plates - First Test

Ilford R.10 Soft Gradation Panchromatic Glass Plates

The first old films I had developed, or used and developed, I'd come across by accident, usually finding them in or with cameras I'd bought, found or been given. Having achieved results of varying success, I began to seek out expired films on occasion, when able to find them cheaply, and this then extended to glass plates. I have a few cameras which take plate holders, which I had previously used with film or paper.
 
Having accumulated a few boxes of glass plates, recent sunny weather provided me with the excuse to try some. A couple of the boxes had already been opened, and it made sense to use plates from one of these first. I chose Ilford R.10 Soft Gradation Panchromatic plates, which I'd bought in a lot with a box of unopened FP4 plates, not knowing whether the plates in the open box had been exposed to light or not. Both boxes have writing in pencil with the date 2/9/65 and 'Photo Centre'; the box of R.10 has "6 8 [crossed out] left". According to the Ilford chronology on the Photomemorabilia website, glass plate production by Ilford finished in 1975 (Ilford do still make photographic glass plates for specialised applications in the nuclear and particle physics industry; some other manufacturers still make plates for general photography, but these are very expensive and a number of photographers coat their own glass plates).

The box originally held 12 plates, 2 1/2x3 1/2 inch size. There are a number of standard plate sizes, both metric and imperial, and a confusion sometimes arises between the closeness of the different sizes: metric and imperial standards are sometimes treated as being interchangeable. There is a metric 6.5x9cm plate size, which is very close to the 2 1/2x3 1/2 imperial size (being 6.4x8.9cm; I have a box of 6.5x9cm plates which has a handwritten label "Do not fit 3 1/2x2 1/2 single slides"). I used 6.5x9cm plate holders, which the imperial size plates will fit, while metric plates of that size wouldn't fit into similarly sized imperial holders.

The camera I shot the plates in is an Ica Icarette L, a dual format camera from the 1920s that takes either 120 film, or 6.5x9cm plates. When I bought this, it came with a plate holder wallet containing four single plate holders, and the following leaflet:-

Ilford Plates leaflet - outside

Ilford Plates leaflet - inside

There's a code on the back of the leaflet, 'G57/D' - possibly referring to its date i.e. 1957. Under 'Packing' it explicitly states that "plates are packed in pairs with the emulsion sides face to face," something I had previously read on a forum, which was good to have confirmed. The pairs of plates are wrapped in black paper, with a thin paper 'runner' holding these together along the short edges. The glass is very thin, less than 2mm and the cut edges of the glass are still sharp.

The R.10 plates were originally rated 100 ISO (the label around the box gives 'Meter settings for minimum exposure ASA 100 DIN 21'). With my previous experience of using out of date film (see the posts about Verichrome and 127 Day), and knowing that the sensitivity would have decreased with time, I shot two plates, the first at 25 ISO, and a second at 12. Exposure was 1/50th at f5.6 and f4.5 respectively. I stand developed the plates in a Combi Plan tank using Rodinal diluted 1:100 for one hour, with 2 minutes pre-soak, and 3 inversions at the half hour mark. The first plate came out black - this one would have been at the top of the box, possibly this had been exposed to light with the box opened at some point, although I'm not ruling out making an error myself. The second plate has a small amount fogging at the left and bottom sides. Once fixed and washed I did not squeegee the plates, but even so the plates took a long time to dry. (Incidentally, I've been reading Ansel Adams' The Negative recently, and in a section on water bath development, Adams compares older thick emulsions favourably to modern thin ones, perhaps the emulsion on the R.10 plates is thicker, and so absorbs more water). The second plate came out well:-

Ilford R.10 glass plate, shot with Ica Icarette L

Aspects of framing and focus of the plate not withstanding, there is something precious and unique about holding a glass negative in one's hand: there's probably a longer essay to be written about how the ease of taking thousands of digital images, compared to dozens on a roll of film, or single sheets, plates and Polaroids, has devalued the photographic image; it may be something to do with the physicality of the image and its physical link (perhaps misconstrued) to authenticity.

Edit: 29/04/13

As a result of my research into Ilford, I discovered the Ilford Technical Information Book, which contains a sheet on the R.10 Soft Gradation Panchromatic plates, dated to 1967. This provides additional information for the plates from the leaflet shown above. It gives the ASA setting for tungsten lighting as 64, against the daylight setting of 100. The table of development times gives further dilutions and times for both continuous and intermittent agitation.

Ilford R.10 development times

Ilford R.10 Curves