Expired Film Treasure: 120-size Kodak Ektar 25 (Abandoned Films 02g)

Dear Readers, I have written about Kodak's ultra-fine resolution Ektar 25 film before. This was the finest-grain color negative film ever made, and when new, had a vivid and contrasty color palette. But it has been out of production for two decades, and most (all?) rolls for sale on ePrey are unusable because they were not stored frozen. Awhile ago, I declared I would not try any more; it was past its time. 

Oh oh, trouble. A friend on the Photrio forum said he had two rolls for me that had been frozen. I could not resist - I know, I know, weak self-discipline. It is an example of succumbing to film GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome).

The first roll I exposed at an exposure index of EI=20. But when the film came back from North Coast Photographic, the frames were much too thin. However, I managed to save about half of the pictures via scanning. The second roll I shot at EI=12, and this one was much better. So, in no particular order, here are some examples of the famous but long-expired Ektar 25, color shifts, warts and all. These are all tripod-mounted exposures. Click any frame to expand. Comments welcome.

Louisiana

Bridge over Judd Bayou, Tensas National Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana (80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar-CB lens)

This is one of my favorite recent photographs. The light, foliage, and setting were just right. This is the end of the road for cars, well within the forest west of the Tensas River. Unfortunately, this area was cut in World War II, so the forest is not old growth, and the loggers destroyed what may have been the last USA habitat for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. 

Vicksburg and Redwood

Former CCC Camp near Union Ave., Vicksburg National Military Park

King Davis Church, Glass Road, Vicksburg (80mm Planar-CB lens, polarizer)

Shed near abandoned cement silos, Rte 3, Redwood (80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar-CB lens, ½ ƒ/5.6)

Remnants at cement silo site, Rte 3, Redwood (50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens)

Crushing mill, Rte 3, Redwood (50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens, 1 sec. ƒ/8)

I have photographed this large metal object before. I am not sure what it once crushed or ground. The deep water pit may have been for cooling water or flushing the material out of the device. Now it is a perfect habitat for water snakes. This is just east of Rte 3 across the street from the old cement silos. 

Where is my food? Happy wet cows, Ball Road, Redwood

Rosedown Road, Vicksburg (80mm ƒ/2.8 Planar-CB lens, ¼ ƒ/4.05)

This is the view looking downhill from Confederate Avenue. These architecturally-boring houses have been here since before the mid-1980s. 

Eagle Lake Area

Jones Lake, near Laney Lake Road, off Rte. 465 (50mm Distagon, ¼ ƒ/11)

Jones Lake, near Laney Lake Road, off 465 (50mm Distagon, ¼ ƒ/11)

Snow in Vicksburg

Adams Street, view north (80mm Planar-CB lens)

Ready to go, Washington Street

Kansas City Southern rail yard from Levee Street

104 Locust Street (50mm ƒ/4 Distagon lens)

106 Locust Street (unoccupied)

201 Locust Street (unoccupied)

Yes, once in awhile, we get a snowstorm in Vicksburg. It changes the entire look of the landscape and is too good to resist capturing with film. The overcast sky and soft light was perfect for this Ektar 25 film.

Locust Street is in the north part of town below Fort Hill. A local dude stopped in his car and told me how the neighborhood was vibrant 20 years ago, with houses on every lot. Now at least half of the lots are grass or have abandoned houses.

Summary

Once again, I am impressed that a 25-year-old color film will still work, albeit with color shifts and minor errors in the emulsion. This film shows it amazing resolution when used with the best optics and careful technique (which means a tripod). But I have no more 120-size Ektar 25 and am unlikely to ever buy any. As I concluded before (but obviously did not follow my own advice): this is the end, no more. There is one roll of 35mm Ektar 25 in the freezer, which I will save it for a special occasion.

Update June 2021: A friend found two rolls of Ektar 25 in his mother's freezer. It looks as if I will be able to enjoy Ektar 25 again.

High Water Again: 2020 in Redwood and Eagle Lake, Mississippi

Flood Notes

Residents of the southern part of the Mississippi Delta (not the geologic delta in the Gulf of Mexico, the flat alluvial plain in west central and northwest Mississippi) remember the flood of 2019. The water rose and stayed up, month after month. Thousands of deer and other forest animals died. Crops were delayed or not planted at all. Houses were inundated for months. The Corps of Engineers closed the Steele Bayou flood gates for months, and water in the Yazoo basin rose and rose. It was a messy scene.

Comparison of 2019 and 2020 river level measured at the Vicksburg gage (from US Army Corps of Engineers at https://rivergages.mvr.usace.army.mil/

Unfortunately, 2020 saw another flood. It was shorter but still a mess for residents of the lower Delta. The plot above shows the river level measured at the Vicksburg Gage (they spell it "gage"). The 2019 high water lasted almost four months. While 2020's peak was shorter, it was almost as high at 50 ft. Note that the Corps of Engineers defines flood stage as 43.0 ft.

February 27, 2020 satellite view of lower Mississippi River valley from NASA Earth Observatory. The lower Yazoo basin is the blue region near the center of the frame.

The NASA Earth Observatory published the satellite image above on February 27, 2020. "..the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite acquired an image showing high water along the lower Mississippi, Pearl, and Pascagoula rivers, among others." The Yazoo Basin is the triangular area in the center of the frame, where the Yazoo River flows into the Mississippi.

Eagle Lake

The residents of the little town of Eagle Lake were inundated for weeks in 2019. Many of the homes and trailers became uninhabitable. In December, group of volunteers called Team Rubicion helped demolish houses at no cost to the residents. Most of the members were veterans.

Eagle Lake on a foggy morning is peaceful and scenic. You can hear the ducks and other waterfowl in the distance.

These photographs are from Shell Beach Road. The Rubicon group was efficient in helping tear down damaged structures. But a friend from Eagle Lake told me that months afterwards, the piles of debris were still there and the county had not sent any trucks to take the junk away. I am not sure of the resolution.

Redwood and Floweree Road

Floweree Road on an overcast day (Moto G5 digital file)

Floweree Road is off US 61 north of Redwood. In 2019, I took photographs of flooding on and around the area. My wife and I biked there several times. This year, I returned with my Tachihara 4×5" camera and Tri-X film. This was in April, but there were no other people about and it was not hazardous re. the virus.

These are all Tri-X frames taken with a 180mm ƒ/5.6 Caltar IIN lens with yellow or green filters. Click any picture to expand to 1600 pixels wide.

Tar shingle house, US 61 (Tri-X film, 135mm ƒ/4.5 Xenar lens, GGr filter)

This little shack is at the junction of US 61 and W. Deer Creek Road. It is faced with old-fashioned asphalt tiles (similar to roofing tiles). I have photographed it before, but this year, it looks distinctly more fragile or decayed.

The square photographs at Eagle Lake are from Kodak Panatomic-X film exposed in my Rolleiflex 3.5E camera with 75mm ƒ/3.5 Schneider Xenotar lens. I scanned the negatives with a Minolta Scan Multi film scanner. The photographs from Floweree road are from 4×5" Tri-X film, most with a 180mm Caltar lens.

The Mississippi Delta 19: Into the Woods in Redwood (B&W film)

Redwood is a small community north of Vicksburg on Hwy. US 61 (the "Blues Highway"). Most people rush by heading to Eagle Lake or Yazoo City, but there are some interesting photographic topics (well, if you like old things, as I do). Redwood is at the southern margin of the Mississippi Delta; north and west of here stretch the flat farmlands and hardwood bottomland of the Mississippi River's alluvial plain.

Abandoned cement silo off Rte. 3. 35mm film, Pentax Spotmatic camera, 35mm Super-Takumar lens.

US 61 swings west after it crosses the Yazoo River, while MS Hwy. 3 proceeds north to Yazoo City. The hulking abandoned cement silos are just off Hwy. 3 about a mile south of the Vicksburg International Paper Mill. I have photographed these silos before. The tracks serve the paper mill and a rail yard further north.

Quite by chance, I drove up a dirt road across the highway from the silos and found this abandoned concrete structure and some sort of crushing mill. I am not sure what it once crushed. It resembles a giant version of the incense burners you see in monasteries in the Himalaya in Nepal.

Hmmm, a snake lives in the pond underneath the concrete frame. Was water from the pond once used in the crushing process? By mid-spring, poison ivy takes over.

There are a couple of abandoned houses along Rte. 3, but nothing too interesting.

Just north of the International Paper plant, the rails fan out into a rail yard, with a lot of parked rolling stock. The tracks end, and I do not know if they once continued north to Yazoo City. The photograph above is the view looking south, with the paper plant at the horizon.

Most of the square photographs were taken with a Rolleiflex 3.5E camera with Xenotar lens. The film was Kodak Panatomic-X, with expiration date 1989 but it still performs perfectly. I wrote about Panatomic-X earlier this year. The close-up of the crushing mill was from a Mamiya C220 camera with 55mm Mamiya lens on Kodak Tri-X Professional 320 film. I previously wrote about the silos in 2010 and in 2017.

Kodak Panatomic-X: the Best Black and White Film*

Introduction

This is the first of an irregular series of posts on discontinued film types ("Films from the Dead").

Bad news, there is only one brick of 120-size Kodak Panatomic-X film left in my freezer. So it goes - all good things must eventually end. I bought several bricks in the late-1990s from an eBay seller in California. As promised, they were in perfect condition. I was unaware when Kodak discontinued the product and therefore did not buy any stock at that time. The fellow in California was a lot smarter than I was. 

*Note: My title needs to be qualified. Panatomic-X might have been the best fine-grain black and white film, but the old standby, Kodak Tri-X, is superb when you need faster speed and do not need as fine grain. Film users have other favorites, such as TMax 100, Ilford Delta 100, or Fuji Acros.

120-size box from 1961, courtesy of Pacific Rim Camera

1951 box for 828 size Panatomic-X, courtesy of Pacific Rim Camera

1937 box for 3¼×4¼" pack film, courtesy of Pacific Rim Camera

Eastman Kodak Company introduced Panatomic in 1933 and discontinued it in 1987. The earliest version of Panatomic (not X) was on nitrate base, but the X version was on safety base, probably around 1937. Kodak packaged it in roll film sizes 117, 616, 620, 120, 127, 135 (standard metal cassettes), and 828 as well as in several film pack sizes. 

It was designed to be an extremely fine grain film, which meant it could be enlarged for large prints and still retain details. This was of value to architectural, fine-art, and aerial photographers. Some 5- inch and 9-inch aerial photography film was a version of Panatomic-X known as AERECON II). 

Kodak reformulated the film during its five-decade existence, and my late production was different than the original. My 1980s version in 120 size was rated at ISO 32, but I shoot it at 20 or 25 and develop it in Agfa Rodinal at 1:50 dilution. Agfa's Rodinal is a developer that retains the grain structure and therefore looks "sharp" (i.e., it does not have solvent action to partly dissolve the edges of the grain clumps). Used with good lenses and careful technique (that means a tripod), the detail in a Panatomic-X negative is astonishing, even in this age of 36-megapixel digital cameras.

From the Archives

This is a photograph that my dad took somewhere in Burma on the Irrawaddy River. He used early Panatomic-X with his Leica IIIC rangefinder camera (still in operation).

1980s and 1990s Examples

These are 1982 examples from a farm in Clifton, Virginia. I had just bought a Rolleiflex 3.5E twin-lens reflex camera and was experimenting with different films. I wanted fine grain for architecture, and Panatomic-X was still in production. After experimenting, I settled on shooting it at EI (exposure index) 25 and developing it in Rodinal 1:50. I also experimented with Agfapan 25 but could never get the contrast right (but that was my error - Agfapan was a fine film).

My new 1959-vintage Rolleiflex 3.5E with 5-element 75mm ƒ/3.5 Schneider Xenotar lens

This is my present Rolleiflex 3.5E camera. It is similar to the one I used in the 1980s, which I should have never sold. The earlier one had a selenium light meter in the slot below the word "Rolleiflex." But my new one has better resolution; everything in its production chain worked out just right. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the factory tested every Rolleiflex camera with film before releasing the unit for sale. If there were any issues, the camera went back for adjustment or installation of new lenses. Rollei precisely matched the taking and viewing lenses in focal length.

Residence room in the Junius Ward YMCA, Clay Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi, early 1990

Panatomic-X film was excellent for detailed photography in old buildings, but you needed a tripod to support the camera for long exposures. In this example, I found an old chair in the hall and placed the camera on it. The Rolleiflex is suited for this work because it does not have a moving mirror and is therefore vibration-free.

Cemetery in Kalavrita, Greece, 1998, Leica M2 35mm camera.

I occasionally used Panatomic-X in 35mm cameras. This is an example from Kalavrita, a town in the Peloponnese of southern Greece. I should have used the 135 size film more often. (Update: Click the link for my 2021 article on 135-size Panatomic-X.)

2000s Examples

Shotgun houses in Grayson Court, Jackson, Mississippi, 2004

Grayson Court in Jackson was an old-fashioned alley with shotgun houses facing the common road. It has been torn down although the property owner did some renovating in the early 2000s. I took this photograph with my Fuji GW690II camera (the "Texas Leica") and its Fuji 90mm f/3.5 lens. The 6×9 negative (real size 54×82mm) scans to a 100 mbyte 16-bit TIFF file. More Fuji examples are below.

Junius Ward YMCA on Clay Street, Vicksburg, 2004. The Old Courthouse Museum is in the distance.

Shotgun houses on Bowmar Avenue, Vicksburg, 2005. Both have been torn down.

The New21 Club on Hwy 61, Valley Park, Mississippi, 2016

Blue Front Cafe, Bentonia, Mississippi, 2010

Administration building (1936) at former Bonner Campbell Institute, Edwards, Mississippi (click to see 2400 pixel frame) 

Unused Teen Center, 407 West Green Street, Tallulah, Louisiana, December 2016. Fuji GW690II camera.

Unused church in Hermanville, Mississippi, January 2017. Rolleiflex 3.5E camera.

Little Bayou Pierre, Port Gibson, Mississippi, February 2017. Rolleiflex 3.5E with 75mm Xenotar lens.

Port Gibson is the town that General Ulysses Grant did not burn during the U.S. Civil War because he admired the architecture so much. 

Crushing mill, Rte 3, Redwood, Mississippi, 2017. Rolleiflex 3.5E with 75mm Xenotar lens.

This is some sort of early 20th century crushing mill, long abandoned in the woods just off Hwy. 3 in Redwood. This is a 1 sec exposure at f/11. I resized this frame to 2400 pixels, so click the picture to see more detail.

2020s Examples

Private cemetery within Vicksburg National military Park. Rolleiflex 3.5E, yellow-green filter

Closing Notes

Kodak likely discontinued Panatomic-X for several reasons:

• Even by the 1980s, most photographers wanted faster film so that they would not need to use a tripod in low light. 
• Newer T-grain or tabular films like Kodak T-Max or Ilford Delta 100 offered almost as fine grain but with faster speed. (Note: many old-time photographers preferred the genuine Panatomic-X.)
• A friend from Rochester, who has worked with Kodak, said there was a toxic chemical used in the Panatomic-X production (possibly cadmium). I have read the same pertaining to Agfapan 25, so maybe slow fine grain films required some chemical technology that manufacturers cannot use today.

Readers know I like film. One reason is I used film for 50 years and am comfortable with it. Another reason is it has a familiar look that we saw in prints, magazines, exhibits, and movies for decades, and it works well for recording urban decay. The self-professed "experts" (I am trying to be polite) on forums like Dpreview hate film because they think they are so superior with their new super digital capture devices. To each his own. Still, if you have aspirations to be a photographer, you owe it to yourself to use the traditional medium, learn how to calculate exposure manually, and contemplate each picture carefully. You need to think with film; no spray and pray that you might achieve a meaningful "shot." And you cannot chimp (review the pictures on the camera's screen) as you see in tourist sites around the world. Read an interesting interview on The Phoblogger with the Richard Photo Lab about how film is appealing to more and more photographers of all ages and skill levels. Used film cameras are cheap acceptable price and many emulsions are still available - just go do it.

Update March 2019

A reader in Photrio found this 1934 announcement from the British Journal Photographic Almanac. Thank you for the detective work.

Update November 2019

Here are examples of industrial machinery at the abandoned Redstone Quarry in North Conway, New Hampshire. I used my Rolleiflex 3.5F with 5-element 75mm ƒ/3.5 Planar lens, all tripod-mounted. Click any picture to see more detail.

Update October 2020

I bought some 35mm Panatomic-X from a seller on eBay. It expired in 1991 and proved to be fine, if possibly more grainy than when new.

Machine shop, Levee Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi (Pentax Spotmatic camera, 28mm ƒ/3.5 Super-Multi-Coated Takumar lens)

Please click this link for more examples of this 1991-vintage 35mm Panatomic-X inVicksburg and Louisiana.

Update July 2022

Good news! I bought ten more rolls of 120 Panatomic-X from the same gent who sold me rolls in the 1990s.