Leica iiig, Elmar, Summar and Retropan Soft 320 in PMK Pyro

Let me begin with my miserable excuses: (1) the weather was sh.., (2) the film was another ‘back of the fridge’ discovery, expired nearly 4 years ago, (3) probably because of poor storage the film was badly fogged, (4) the purpose of the exercise was to check that a newly bought iiig functioned properly not to take great photos, but rather than 36 shots of my left foot I decided to take a walk and just snap away, (5) the film was developed in Bergger PMK Pyro. No development time for this film was given or was available on the massive development chart, so I took a guess – 15m at 21degC.

The film was scanned with a Sony A7Riii, Sigma 105mm macro at f5.6, BlackScaleLabs 35mm system, and images processed in RawTherapee. Looking at the histogram there was a small blip in the middle of the range – that was the image. Fairly drastic manipulation of the contrast curve was necessary, but I am quite happy with the development time and the performance of PMK.

At this point I started thinking – always a dangerous exercise. This is a fast film (I regard PanF as medium speed). In the early years of last century and before, photographers were often using film where the ASA could be counted on one hand. Slow films are high contrast (at least modern emulsions) while fast films have a flatter response curve. So how come old photographs are not just deep blacks and glaring whites, how did they get a full tonal scale? My thoughts turned in the direction soft working developers, and a very common developer in the early days was pyro – a soft working developer. Retropan Soft, low contrast lighting, soft developer – hence very flat negatives.

The images look like low contrast prints from the 1950s and before, grain looking like the image is chiselled in concrete. Does Retropan Soft do what it says on the tin? You bet it does. If that is the look you want then I highly recommend it.

The featured image was taken along one of the main thoroughfares in Brussels, the road is on the right and a glass fronted building on the left, taken with an Elmar 50mm f3.5. This was a rare occasion where I quickly responded to events going on around me – the traffic lights ahead had changed, a phalanx of vehicles was rushing towards me and I could see the reflections in the building. I generally preset aperture and exposure time when the ambient light is consistent, and usually keep the camera focussed on near infinity. Raise camera, point, click.

The images below in Brussels taken in a space of four consitently dull days. Taken with the Summar unless stated otherwise.

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