My First Roll of Kentmere Pan 100

I have decided to shoot up the last few rolls of color print film I have left in my refrigerator and concentrate my film photography efforts in black and white moving forward. Availability of my favorite color films, like Kodak Portra 400 and Ektar 100 are hit and miss and prices are pretty high. And I am happy to make color images with my Fujifilm X-T1 digital camera.

To keep my black and white photography within budget, I’ve been trying out some less expensive film stocks. I’ve seen some nice work from various photographers I follow using Kentmere Pan 100 film. This film retails for around six bucks a roll and since it’s made by Ilford, I assumed the quality would be consistent with their other fine black and white products.

I tried my first roll during a weekend trip to San Francisco. My equipment was a Nikon FE with the compact Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 pancake lens mounted. This is great lightweight kit for a day of walking around the city.

First, Union Square:

Having lunch atop Macys:

A stroll around Chinatown:

And then off to Golden Gate Park. First stop, the Ansel Adams exhibit at the de Young:

As you would expect of an ISO 100 film, the grain is fine. I didn’t do much at all in post processing of these images other than some cropping here and there. This film has a bit of a vintage look, somewhat reminiscent of Kodak’s Plus-X Pan, a film I dearly miss. I keep saying I need to find one black and white film I really like and then spend some time shooting it exclusively. Really get to know it. I am not sure this is the film, but I have four more rolls in the chiller, so we’ll see.