I mentioned in my last post that I ended up getting a ton of grain from Pancro 400. After looking at it more, I think it was partly due to development and partly due to the beach. While I still want to test it again and developing it in ID-11 or if I can cook up a recipe, DDX (none exist in the place I have looked), I decided to try making darkroom prints of a few shots I really liked just to see how they would look on paper.
The answer? Though the scan doesn’t do it justice, pretty great! The tones are much better and the grain when scanned or looked at through a loupe is still larger than say HP5+ or Delta 400, it’s not distracting. Couple things to note there though. I still think the huge grains are a product of developing the original film poorly or that’s at least something I wanna look in to. Also I didn’t have a grain focuser so the softeness could be because I didn’t focus the grain as well when printing (although the silky smooth tones are a benefit regardless). Finally I printed this on Ilford RC Satin paper in 5×7 so the paper and size may have something to do with it as well.
Overall though I was very happy with the results! It makes me more excited to test Pancro 400 again, although I think HP5+ is still my 400 speed goto. Not sure when I will test Pancro 400 again though as I am playing around with FP4+ in 35mm now and am pondering PAN-F next…