At a recent darkroom group meeting, I was pleased to receive four rolls of 120 format Kodak Verichrome Pan. So after the meeting, I went home and loaded up my camera, and I was ready to try it out.
With film in pocket and camera, I went down to the Fraser River/Matsqui Trail to shoot a couple of rolls with my Mamiya C330 Professional S camera with the M/S 55mm lens mounted on the front and a yellow filter over the taking lens. I metred my exposures with my Sekonic L-408 5-degree spot metre and rated the film at EI 80, it was originally rated at ISO 125. Finally, I anchored everything with my Sirui 2204 tripod to secure the camera. It was a beautiful sunny day with some nice cloud patterns which meant that the parking lot near the river was FULL!
Later that evening I processed the film, but could not find any information about it at the Massive Development Chart website, however, my Google search lead me to a fellow Canadian: Alex Luyckx’s Blog, where I found that he has already been there done that as far as this film is concerned.
Thus, I followed his dilution and timing instructions for my trusty HC-110 developer. For the first time, I used a different dilution than I usually use, instead of 1:31 (B) for 5.30 minutes, I used 1:62 (H) for 8.30 minutes at ~20 ˚C and the film turned out quite good save for a bit of base fog, but as you can see from the sample images below, it doesn’t seem to have much effect on the images. Not too bad for a film that expired in March of 2001 – 18 years ago!
According to Alex Luyckx, this average purpose film was released by Kodak in 1956 and has a wide exposure latitude but I still bracketed exposures anyway. I can’t wait to get into a darkroom to make a contact sheet and some prints. I made audio notes for the various exposures and bracketed several shots because I wasn’t sure how this film would work out if at all.
~ Bob
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