[ Post New Message | Post Reply to this One | Send Private Email to Thomas Wollstein | Help ]

Response to Highest resolution B&W film (+ dev) other than Tech Pan?

from Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de)
The following resolutions were given to me by Ilford Germany:

Pan F Plus 150 l/mm FP4 Plus 110 l/mm HP5 Plus 100 l/mm 100 Delta Pro 160 l/mm Delta 400 Pro 145 l/mm Delta 3200 Pro 100 l/mm XP2 Super 110 l/mm SFX 200 80 l/mm

They apply to a contrast of 1:1000. Under practical conditions, expect to find half these values.

Ilford does not give these resolutions in technical documentation as they find they are not really useful for practical application.

I, too, cannot say I have tested Gigabitfilm yet, and I certainly won't for the time being, as it seems the film still has some problems. It is extremely sensitive to residues of surfactants (wetting agents) in the tank, and the comments from those who did test it are inconclusive. Whereas some say sharpness and tonal rendition are great, others state the either the negatives or the prints, or both, look real bad. So far, there has been one realistic test in a German B&W magazine that compared the film to Tech Pan and other high-resolution films, and it was the bottom line of this article that Gigabitfilm is far from being the revolution is resolution. To me, the examples of resolution test targets shot with Tech Pan and Gigabitfilm using the same Leica camera and lens showed no recognizable difference in resolution. Gigabitfilm is indeed Agfa Copex material, and all the proprietary stuff is in the developer. The film is developed to give really soft negatives. That, together with the fact that it's actually underexposed (so the author of the article claims) makes for the alleged overexposure tolerance.

If it's for resolution testing, you might be happy with a document film such as Cachet/Macophot Ort 25.

Regards, Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de)

(posted 8433 days ago)

[ Previous | Next ]