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It seems safe to assume that Harmon (maker of Kentmere and Ilford films) does the coating/finishing of this film, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this emulsion is simply Kentmere or HP5 as many claim. Regardless, this film, to me, is surprisingly high quality for one so cheap. It has low contrast with good latitude (define latitude), and I’d say a medium to fine grain. It dries flat and is great for scanning. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. Sony A7R Mark III - The Best Digital Camera for Image Documentation - Featuring the Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS
Because of the overcast conditions and subject matter (Fort Worth's Modern Art Museum) I decided to process in Rodinal for approximately 50% longer than normal time. This proved to be a good guess - if anything the roll could have used a bit more development, tho' the roll is about right for a condenser head (I'm using a color head at the moment). Teaser - On a Comedy of Errors with the Leica APO 50, Elcan 50, and Dual Range 50 + the Leica M10, Leica M4, and Leica KE-7A The original Kentmere 400 film box branding said “Kentmere 400” on the side (white box and cassette label). The new branding reads “Pan 400” on one side and it has a pink-purple box design. (“Kentmere” is written on the other side). If Kentmere 400 becomes known as Pan 400 it is very easy to confuse this film with the Ilford Pan 400. They are different film from my own testing but no wonder people get confused! I thought I would mention it. AGFA Photo APX 400 vs Kentmere 400 There are different ways to over expose film. A common way if you lab develop your film is to meter the film in camera at say ISO 200 and then ask you lab to develop the film as normal. For Kentmere 400 this would be at ISO 400 giving a +1 stop over exposure (as you metered at ISo 200)(thereby giving the camera +1 stops of extra light on each image).
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Once again I'd like to comment as this does reinforce what several of us have said re; films being developer dependant...
But assuming you’re ok with my own set of criteria, what you’re going to want to do first is to go through each of these criteria and rate how important each one is to you personally on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being not important at all and 5 being extremely important. The first t-grain film we’ll discuss is Kodak T-MAX and Lady Gray (which is the same film). This film is very linear, tonally. It has very fine grain. The T-grain emulsion, as I mentioned, high sharpness and very high-edged detail. T-MAX is a great choice if you don’t like grain. The T-MAX base has a pink tint to it. Like Rollei Retro, T-MAX is also extremely curly upon drying but is also currently fairly affordable at .15 per frame. I'm not quite ready to proclaim it on par with APX 100 but it's far closer to its slower counterpart than TMY is to TMX. And I'm not certain it will replace Tri-X in my affections but I certainly like it. I have another roll to test, which I'll develop in ID-11 or Perceptol, about as different from Rodinal as I have available.Fourth, the comparison reinforced my bias against Agfa APX 400 - which I believe is overly sanitized (albeit the most contemporary) in image reproduction. In my opinion, the rendering of APX 400 is rather restrained. That is to say, the grain structure is flat, the weighting between highlights, shadows, and midtones is even, and the perception of sharpness is muted. As a result, APX 400 is rather digital-like in impression. That said, being flat does make APX 400 easier to manipulate in post - which makes it exceptionally contemporary. So what were your results? Does this test change anything for you? Has it sparked your interest in a new film? I’d love to hear about it in the comments? The Agfa 400 had the most grain, and slightly less sharpness than TMax/HP5, but it was not as grainy as Tri-X developed in D-76, and certainly acceptable. Testing conditions were difficult - I shot the entire roll of 120 (6x6 through my Agfa Isolette V) within about an hour under uniformly overcast late afternoon conditions. Because I didn't have a tripod with me I rated the film at 400. My baseline exposure was 1/100 @ f/11 at the start of the test and the light had dropped enough to require f/8 by the end of the roll; about as uniform as one could want outside the studio. All the films exhibited SOME compression of highlight tones, but this is typical of my scanner. The TMax and Delta 400 highlights were slightly more compressed, but not all that different.
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