Dear filmwasters,
after quite a break here I want to post something new. I had a short exchange with Jojonas on flickr, and I told him to post my findings here and I am happy that I can do that now.
Finally I did what I had in mind since long. I bought a roll of Ilford PanF and compared it with PolypanF. The camera I used was a modified Olympus XA2, I painted the pressure plate matte black, reducing the halation.
Let aside the known differences of the PE vs acetate base and different perforation and the unknown(?) manufacturer of the Polyf, there are also some identical properties. The colour of the emulsion is absolutely the same as is the clearing time when fixing. And of course the high grade image quality of both, again not looking at the halation. If the possible halos are a bug or a feature, you decide. Sometimes I like'em, sometimes I don't. I noticed that different cameras can give different results and finally I red a note about reflective or non-reflctive pressure-plates and that it makes a difference. I have a p+s camera that produces less halation than others with the poly, and in fact the pressure plate is matte! So I decided to paint the pressure plate of my Olmpus XA2 with a dead matte paint, and voila! almost no or no halation at all is recognisable now.
So here are the results, taken with the same camera within about 5 minutes, developed in the same tank with Parodinal. The film speed is identical, same shadow detail on both, but the polypan negs are less contrasty. The longer dev times for the polypan which you can find often make sense. But not a big deal, after a small adjustment of the contrast curve the results are more or less not distinguishable from each other.
The polypan seems to be a tiny little bit less sharp, but it's not him to blame but me. I forgot to set the distance on the XA2 to infinity for this shot. When I noticed my fault, the light was completely different so I couldn't redo the it.
Now here are the samples, I upoaded them in maximum resolution, negs scanned with dslr, bellows and rodagon enlarger lens. Fyi, the 'Bauhaus' sign is white letters on red. The polypan imo is sensitized the same way as the panf.
I don't know who made the PolypanF and honestly I don't care anymore. The similarity is obvious as are the differences. But with a matted pessure plate you get a cheap film whoose results are very close to the prime film. And if you like the glow, just grab another camera with a reflective pressure plate. 2 films in one canister. That's even more than the prime film can do! No attack against Ilford, I love underdogs...... Especially when they show special qualities. Then they can be - overdogs?
Click on the images, and on the flickr site on the down-facing arrow at the right below the pic, to watch the biggest size.
Ilford PanF+:
panf by
imagesfrugales, on Flickr
Polystar PolypanF:
polypanf by
imagesfrugales, on Flickr
Cheers - Reinhold
