Shooting Ilford Pan F+ with a No.1 Pocket Kodak

My cropped shot of the China Town gate, this was the image I was most keen on taking on that day. You can see the uncropped version below. 9s (B) 111mm F45, focus set at 8m.

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.

London’s many high rise buildings gave me a fresh challenge with composition with this camera. 1s (B) 111mm F45, focus set at 8m.

I wanted to capture converging lines with this skycraper. It was aimed higher than I wanted it to due to over correction, but I am actually pleased with how it turned out, the neighbouring building helping to fill part of the empty space. 1/2s (B) 111mm F45, focus set at infinity.

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.

The Royal Exchange, ideally I would have composed this a bit lower to capture more of the foreground whilst still keeping the top of the building in frame. 1s (B) 111mm F45, focus set at 8m.

My initial capture of the Thames with way more sky and way less river than I had intended to capture. 1/2s (B) 111mm F45, focus set at infinity.

Thankfully I kept the entirety of the moving boat in frame at the bottom so I could crop down to this complete panorama.

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

Again this shot of the City of London skyline was aimed far too high so the buildings are falling out of frame. 1/2s (B) 111mm F45, focus set at infinity.

Cropping in tightly produces a better composition and allowed me to crop out the head of a passerby that has snuck into frame. However up close you can also more easily see all the scratches on this heavily handled film.

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.

This shot of the National Portrait Gallery was my most disappointing with much of the building completely missing from the shot. This frame made me realise I needed to look more closely at the camera itself to get a better idea of what the lens was actually looking at to avoid these situations again. 3s (B) 111mm F45, focus set at 8m.

Cropping once again helped me salvage the image and closer up the fountain is more prominent, adding interest.

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.

The uncropped version of the China Town Gate. Thankfully I managed to capture the entire gate but I wanted more of the hustle and bustle in the foreground. The image above cut out the dead space of the empty sky. 9s (B) 111mm F45, focus set at 8m.

My final image on the roll of the sketcher at Leicester Square. I picked this out as the were sitting largely still giving a point of focus whilst being surrounded by the blurred masses who gave a sense of how busy the place was. 8s (B) 111mm F32, focus set at 8m.

Whilst taking the image at Leicester Square, a street photographer took a photo of me taking it. You can check out Karl’s work here on Instagram 1/500s 33mm F2.0 ISO 640 Fuji X-T4.

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