Yes my lament was the day they stopped making Verichrome Pan. It was
beautiful.
On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 3:58 PM, `Richard Knoppow <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I had some exposure to photography (no pun intended) as far back as I
can remember but my introduction to practical work came when my dad took a
course from the boy scouts. He came home with a Kodak Darkroom in a Box.
This had three small trays, a couple of film clips, a small printing frame,
a ruby lamp (that was my safelight) Some packages of Kodak Tri-Chem Pak, a
package of Velox paper, probably some other stuff. Well, he didn't do
anything with it but I set up in the basement and did. I am pretty sure the
film was a roll of 127 Verichrome. I have no memory of what the pictures
were of, maybe the front of the house, but I sure do remember developing
and printing them.
Verichrome and Ansco or AGFA Plenichrome were "box camera" films,
moderate speed, orthochromatic, long margin (wrong word but I am drawing a
blank on the right one) to accomodate poor exposures. Very similar films.
Somewhere around 1960 both were replaced by panchromatic films, Kodak
with Verichrome Pan (IMO an outstanding film) and Ansco with All Weather
Pan. One reason was that cameras had changed. Older box camras used very
simple lenses, mostly simple single element meniscus lenses with no color
correction at all. Using blue sensitive or orthochromatic film aided in
obtaining reasonably sharp images since the largest deviations of chromatic
aberration were in the yellow and red range.
As the inexpensive cameras in which these films were used became more
sophisticated with better lenses the desire was for better tonal rendition
rather than to avoid blur from seriously uncorrected lenses. So ortho films
other than for special uses pretty much disappeared from the market.
Kodak stated in a couple of places that Verichrome Pan was the same
emulsion as Plus-X but without retouching surfaces but a comparison of
curves and experience using both shows that it was not the same. I always
preferred Verichrome Pan to Plus-X, it was my favorite medium speed film
for as long as it was made.
BTW, I think I remember reading, perhaps in Ira Current's memoirs,
that Ansco had their wedge spectrograms made by Kodak since they could not
afford the equipment. Boy they sure look the same.
BTW, my start in electronics also dates from a course in radio my dad
took from the Boy Scouts. We built a crystal set on a real breadboard with
coils wound up on toilet paper tubes. Worked like a charm.
My dad was a lawyer but was also interested in mechanical things.
On 9/12/2017 11:57 AM, Eric Goldstein wrote:
I once worked with an old timer who used to lament that one of the darkest
days in film history was when Verichrome was replaced by Verichrome Pan
--
Richard Knoppowdickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
WB6KBL
