But if you’re a beginner to film processing, I’d absolutely recommend starting with any of the films I’ve mentioned previously and not this one, as you’ll have an easier time of it. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s talk about this film. Just as when I was researching for the Ilford Pan 400 review, I found speculation that Kentmere was made from the offcuts of HP5 Plus that were of lower quality than the rest of the batch. Dilution 1+1 does not offer this speed increase but gives fine grain negatives with full film speed. ILFOTEC HC Developer According to Harman themselves, it has ‘a broad tonal range along with a wide exposure latitude’, although that comes across like something all film manufacturers say.

Different dilutions provide flexibility in development times, grain, and contrast. Lower dilutions (e.g., 1+15) will develop faster but may lead to increased grain, while higher dilutions (e.g., 1+31) take longer but can offer finer grain and less contrast. ILFOTEC LC29 Developer Earlier this year, I tested the 35mm format (both 100 ISO and 400 ISO options) for the first time and was duly impressed. A few weeks ago, I also had the opportunity to test out the new Kentmere 100 and 400 films in medium format and can happily say I arrived at a similar conclusion. The loading process can be done with a daylight changing bag or dark room, and daylight film loader.My gut feeling is that the EI 100 films look “decently identical” (in “color” rendering, grain, shadow/highlight retention, and so on). And they all have the “film look” I was going for (or it’s just confirmation bias, who actually knows). I ended up being really happy with the results. The combination of grain and muddy tones gave my images quite a timeless aesthetic. There was a wonderful rendering of the shadows, especially when directly contrasted with bright light. For example in the shot of the dancer (first image in this post) the sheer darkness of his silhouetted face against the sky, which is what I exposed for, is wonderful, and all of the other shades of grey are not invasive enough to spoil this point of interest in the frame. ILFOTEC DDX is a fine grain developer that provides excellent speed use and sharpness with modern films. It’s generally used at a 1+4 dilution for most films. ILFOSOL 3 Developer Kentmere 400 is a budget film from Ilford. It is a reliable film at a low cost and makes a great starting point for beginners. Ilford have also recently brought out an affordable plastic camera. Basically a disposable, but that you can reload. And they give you a couple of rolls of Kentmere to get you started. So, for our Kentmere Pan 400 film review, we put a roll of 35mm in our Harman Reusable Camera and took it out around South London. The purpose of the stop bath is to immediately halt the action of the developer on the film. This ensures that the images are not overdeveloped, thereby maintaining the desired level of contrast and detail in the final images.

In summary: compared to Kentmere Pan 100, Kentmere Pan 400 is a faster film with more noticeable grain, lower contrast and better latitude for pushing.

Blind Test

Also, what can I improve in these tests? What would you like to see me change or do differently in the next one? I definitely have plans to do more of these, and I would love to hear what can make them better. I don’t develop my own film so cannot speak from experience on that in this section. However, according to Harman, Kentmere ‘can be processed in a wide range of different developers using spiral tanks, deep tanks and automatic processors’. After the stop bath, the film needs to go through a fixing process. Fixing is crucial as it removes the unexposed silver halides from the film, making the film’s image permanent and insensitive to further exposure of light. The ILFORD Fixer is a rapid fixer that can be used in this process. When I want a cheaper option, I liked my result with Fomapan, and I will be sharing my results with pushing Arista EDU next week. Stay tuned. For most of these numbers, you may be able to just use mine. Here is another link to a second version of this read-only spreadsheet. This one has my results, and you are welcome to copy numbers from the sections here which apply.

I developed the film myself with Ilford DDX. I followed the one shot development instructions. I did not push or pull the film during the developing process. There are development instructions to push Kentmere 400 two stops. ILFOSTOP is a low odor stop bath solution that is part of the ILFORD range and is specifically designed for this task. In our recent Global Film Users Survey, 75% of the the 8600+ respondents used 120 format so there are a lot of medium format photographers out there. While all of our ILFORD films are available in this format we wanted to ensure there is choice at different price points. Kentmere Pan 100 and 400 films are not necessarily intended as ‘professional’ films, yet we have seen you can still create exceptional results all professionals would be proud of." Available now The film dried fairly flat and scanned easily. I thought the scans looked pretty good right out of the scanner, but I boosted contrast on them all in Photoshop anyway.

Potentially one of the last affordable films offers quality above its low price tag

It’s probably not going to be found on shelves in supermarkets or other non-specialised stores though, like some colour negative consumer-grade Kodak films sometimes are.

And here are my results. These results are super surprising to me. For those who watched my first version of this test, these results are extremely different. Part of the reason for this is that this time, I am taking into account things like scannability and price into the equation. But even more than that, I just think I had a better process of development and scanning this time. The Voigtlander Bessa L is an unusual camera in that there is no viewfinder or rangefinder. I just love that it is so lightweight it is perfect for my needs when running. For this run I used the lesser known and probably even more less popular lens, the Soviet Orion-15 28mm f6 lens. ( I need to review this too!) Why this lens? Because it too is crazy light weight (and also I like to experiment!) I used a cheap and broken 28mm hotshoe viewinder taped together to give me an approximate composition but I later wished it was more precise. (I will get a proper 28mm finder for next time). To focus I guessed (often badly) via hyperfocal distance. Looking at the images in some photos I forgot to adjust focus but it adds to the imperfect vintage look I guess. Being followed.. The similarity is less clear for the ISO 400 film because of the bad fog (worse grain and shadow detail in the N74 plus), but “color” rendering (the way various colors are translated into BW tones) look really similar. There seems to be a small difference in UN54 vs Kentmere 100 blue vs. red rendering, and absolutely no difference for the ISO 400 films. I’ve read a few accounts of Kentmere Pan 400’s image quality and qualities so will relay them here before giving my own thoughts. Join the family on Patreon!Instant access: 200+ exclusive posts including 100+ videos, 2 group Zoom calls/month, Friendly private Facebook group.. *Sign up to Patreon for 12 months and get 10% off!

After exposing my first roll of each film I would say the Ilford Pan 400 is worth paying the very slightly higher price tag (vs. Kentmere). To my eyes anyway. I’m not a pixel peeper but Pan 400 just looks ‘better’ or at worst no different. Both Kentmere 400 and Ilford Pan 400 films perform great and I have no concerns but I think Pan 400 has that edge. Pan 400 looks slightly sharper or with higher resolution from my test. You can decide for yourself from the sample images I share. There are different ways to over expose film. A common way if you lab develop your film is to meter the film in camera at say ISO 200 and then ask you lab to develop the film as normal. For Kentmere 400 this would be at ISO 400 giving a +1 stop over exposure (as you metered at ISo 200)(thereby giving the camera +1 stops of extra light on each image).