Paul:(posted 9187 days ago)Tech pan is a high contrast film. Most developers like D-76 will develop tech pan, but the contrast is so high as to be unusable for normal(pictoral)photography.
I've used at least 3 developers to achieve normal contrast sucessfully with tech pan. The obvious one is kodak's own technidol, formulated specifically for tech pan. It works well, but agitation has to be precise and it is pricey and you get an E.I. of only 25.
A second developer I've used for several years is Ethol TEC in the 2 solution formula. It is extremely economical and you get an E.I. of 100. TEC is a bit hard to find. It also works well with other films like T-max 100. It is important that you get the 2-solution version, as problems have been reported with the liquid version for tech pan.
I'm curently using Diafine, a two solution developer. Diafine has the big advantage of being insensitive to development times, temperature and agitation. This is a big advantage with t-max 100, since t-max is very sensitive to processing conditions. With tech pan, temperature and agitation are not critical, but the time in the second "B" bath is critical. I've found that exactly one minute (60 sec)gives normal contrast and an E.I. of 100.
You give up the ability to push or pull development in Diafine, but get extremely consistant results. The only variable is exposure. If you look at the tech sheets for Diafine, you will not see a recommendation for tech pan. This 60 second "B" was discovered by another fellow who use to post here. Daifine is also very economical.
Other developers I'm aware of, but have not tired are;
Rodinal at 100:1 giving an E.I of 12
Three developers from Photographer's Formulary that give E.I.'s up to 100.
I've not found tech pan to yield noticable differences in grain size with the three developers I've used.