Shooting Ilford Pan F+ with a No.1 Pocket Kodak
Following on from my success from shooting my fifth roll through the No.1 Pocket Kodak, I wanted to further test how much detail and resolution I could extract from this very old piece of glass. What better way than to shoot Ilford’s highly detailed ISO 50 Pan F+, a film stock that is also much closer to the speeds available when this camera was originally released in the 1926.
To mix things up a bit I shot this roll of film in London where there were much larger buildings to further challenge myself in composing with this camera. All in all, it was a successful day out and I managed to get the focus right in all the images. With such large and far away subjects’ infinity focus is actually useful here, as there isn’t always a lot of things in the foreground. However, I was struggling with composition and, unfortunately, I ended up over-compensating for the viewfinder framing issues I spoke about in last week’s blog. The portrait images were less affected, but the landscape images were well off. Evidently, they need a lot less correction (if any at all) and it was an important lesson to learn for my next rolls. Thankfully I could somewhat rescue the images through cropping, once again showing how powerful that tool can be when used properly.
To add to the fun, I was also photographed myself by a street photographer when I was shooting my last frame in Leicester Square. Luckily, I had stopped right where he was sitting. It’s not very often I get someone taking my picture, so it was a good way to wrap up a day’s shooting. You can check out Karl’s work here: https://www.instagram.com/landberk6
Unfortunately, I didn’t do a good job developing this particular roll. I spent an agonising forty-five minutes trying to get it onto the reel in the dark bag and my final salvation was the age-old trick of inserting a thin, flat object through the reel near the entry point to stop the film from slipping out. Needless to say, I will do that for every roll I develop from now on as I really don’t want any future rolls to be as hideously scratched as this one.
To conclude, I think this low ISO, high detail film suits this camera and its limited settings well. It allows you to use the more reliable Bulb & Time modes as well as extract every last bit of detail this ninety-year-old lens can muster. As an added bonus this film can also be easily developed more economically with less chemicals due to its fast development time. If you’ve got an old film camera where you are going slow anyway, make sure to try Pan F+ if you haven’t already.
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