Large Format Photography Australia

I've been given a box of Kodak Plus-X Pan 8x10 film. As a guess, it's probably more than 30 years old based on the packaging and Plus-X is not a film I have any knowledge of beyond it being a nominal iso 125. I'd appreciate any suggestions on shooting it before I go out and burn some.

My first 8x10 film was seriously out-of-date Kodak Plus-X that a mate gave away because he wouldn't trust it for commercial work. I set up the camera looking at a front-lit "standard scene", grass, trees, houses, sky , clouds, etc and did a series of stepped exposures on a single 8x10 sheet. This is easily done by moving the film-holder dark-slide 50mm (say) between clicks and keeping track of f-stops and shutter speeds. I got an EI = 50 result with obvious base fog. Since I was going to use the negatives for contact work I set EI = 25 on my light meter. Big film loves extra exposure especially if it has lost sensitivity through age.

Thanks for your advice Maris. I've shot a few sheets of TRI-X of similar age and ended up rating that at 50. Your suggestion of 25 for the Plus-X sounds like an excellent staring point. Hopefully I might have something worthwhile to post in due course.

Some of the first fruits. Unfortunately is looks like the Plus-X sheets are fogged along one edge. You were spot on with your suggestion for EI, Maris. Apologies for the terrible quality of the jpegs.

Kodak Plus-x Pan rated at 50


By way of comparison FP4+ rated at 125