Kentmere Pan 200 Film Review
Possibly the Best Everyday Black-and-White Film
9 min read by Dmitri.Published on .
Kentmere Pan 200 is a new medium-speed black-and-white film from the same company that makes Ilford and Harman¹ photochemical products.
The Kentmere brand of film has historically been sold as affordable stock, and the Pan 200 is no exception. Wherever it’s found, this film is one of the cheapest options. Globally, it’s the second-most affordable film after Fomapan Classic 100.
It’s even cheaper when bought in bulk, yielding about 19 rolls for every 100-foot pack. But you can also find this film in the regular 35mm and 120 formats.
Pan 200 was a glowing success when it launched last year — so much so that it was sold out for months at my favourite stores. But having finally got my hands on one, I was disappointed with my results due to the inaccurate times and dilutions on the Massive Dev Chart. Quite upsetting, given that Rodinal (my developer) is very popular and probably should not have been omitted from the official documentation.
In this review, I share my corrected development times for Kentmere Pan 200 in Rodinal (for box and push/pull development), along with the technical overview of dynamic range, resolution, tonality, scanning, and more.
In this review: Grain, resolution, and sharpness. Dynamic range and contrast. Scanning, editing, and restoring highlights. Developing Kentmere Pan 200 in Rodinal. Pushing Kentmere Pan 200 +1 stop to EI 400 in Rodinal. Pulling Kentmere Pan 200 -1 stop to EI 100 in Rodinal. Halations. Kentmere Pan 200: possibly the best everyday black-and-white film stock. Price and availability. Support this blog & get premium features with GOLD memberships!
¹ — Harman Technology Ltd. makes Ilford, Harman, and Kentmere-branded films. Except Ilford Ilfocolor film — a confusing but fascinating relic of a past bankruptcy.
Grain, resolution, and sharpness.
Rodinal is considered to be a very grain-forward developer. Whatever film you dunk in it, it’ll come out grainier than with most other developers. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the grain prominence can also add perceived sharpness to the image.
I like the look of Kentmere Pan 200 with Rodinal. The grain is certainly there, but the images feel clean, soft, and well-defined. Pushed, pulled, and at box speed, the film retained all the detail I expected from a roll of cheap black-and-white film — and more.
Dynamic range and contrast.
As expected, the film will increase its contrast when pushed and decrease when pulled or overexposed.
Unfortunately, the Kentmere Pan 200 datasheet does not share film characteristic curves. Still, it’s possible to infer from the photos in this article that its dynamic range is fairly extensive. In other words, the film will retain highlights and shadows well (even in high-contrast scenes), and it can tolerate significant exposure and development mistakes.
In the photo above, you may notice that the film has enough dynamic range to simultaneously retain texture in the very bright overcast sky and in the dimly lit indoors, where on a large screen, you’ll be able to see a person picking produce through the doorway on the right. The photo was scanned on the Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 5000ED and inverted with film Q. No edits.
I generally prefer high-contrast black-and-white photos; Kentmere Pan 200 is no exception: I like its unedited look best when pushed +1 stop:
Scanning, editing, and restoring highlights.
Thankfully, there’s also an easy way to increase the contrast without losing detail after scanning if you’ve overexposed, overdeveloped, or pulled your Pan 200 and wish it had more punch or definition. The film’s forgiving dynamic range/latitude and its detail-dense grain structure are exceptionally accepting of edits and experiments.
I used the dilution and times from the popular Massive Dev Chart to develop my first roll of Kentmere Pan 200 in Rodinal. Unfortunately, that produced negatives that are entirely too dense. They looked extremely bright after I inverted them. Thankfully, my scanner was perfectly capable of penetrating the high-density film, and film Q inverted the digital negatives without clipping shadows or highlights.
Editing, including restoring extremely overdeveloped highlights in the inverted JPEGs, was unexpectedly easy. There was no need for much larger 16-bit TIFFs, so I could save some space on my hard drive without sacrificing any noticeable image quality.
But of course, correct development times and proper exposure will still yield results with better detail and grain quality across the image:
Developing Kentmere Pan 200 in Rodinal.
I’ve tested Pan 200 in Rodinal with several timings and dilutions. My best results, which made scanning this film easy and produced the most realistic apparent brightness without edits, were with the following times and dilutions —
Kentmere Pan 200 EI 200 (box speed) Rodinal dev recipe:
Mix ratio: 1+25 (dilution calculator).
Temperature: 20℃/68℉ (room temperature).
Development time: 8:00.
Agitation: 10-15 seconds of agitation every minute.
Pushing Kentmere Pan 200 +1 stop to EI 400 in Rodinal.
If you’d like to shoot this film as if it were ISO 400, you can do so by pushing it +1 stop in development. All you need to do is keep the film in for one more minute.
Kentmere Pan 200 EI 400 (+1 push) Rodinal dev recipe:
Mix ratio: 1+25 (dilution calculator).
Temperature: 20℃/68℉ (room temperature).
Development time: 9:00.
Agitation: 10-15 seconds of agitation every minute.
When pushed +1 stop, you should expect a touch more contrast, but still plenty of details in the shadows and highlights:
☝︎ Update: @papashittycams.bsky.social confirmed the development times for box and push-development with Rodinal.
Pulling Kentmere Pan 200 -1 stop to EI 100 in Rodinal.
If you’d like to shoot this film as if it were ISO 100, you can do so by pulling it -1 stop in development. All you need to do is dilute your chemistry a little.
Kentmere Pan 200 EI 100 (-1 pull) Rodinal dev recipe:
Mix ratio: 1+50 (dilution calculator).
Temperature: 20℃/68℉ (room temperature).
Development time: 8:00.
Agitation: 10-15 seconds of agitation every minute.
When pulled -1 stop, this film will show decreased contrast, a good amount of detail in highlights and shadows — but don’t expect finer grain; to me it looks identical, if not more pronounced:
Halations.
Halations are an effect of total internal reflection, resulting in red halos around bright points of light on colour film. Most film manufacturers spend considerable effort and resources on developing anti-halation layers.
Like colour, black-and-white film is susceptible to halations. Whereas many black-and-white films, including HP5+ and Tri-X, use anti-halation layers, Kentmere Pan 200 does not. You can see the “blooming” halation effect around the sun’s reflection in the car windshield in the photo below; it’s the circle around the star (the starburst effect itself — not the halo — is due to another optical property of a closed-down aperture):
Kentmere Pan 200: possibly the best everyday black-and-white film stock.
There are several reasons Kentmere Pan is cheaper than most other black-and-white films. The lack of an anti-halation layer is one. I don’t love how it looks pulled, and suspect that pushing or pulling it more than +2/-2 stops may not preserve details as well as other films. Still, this film is surprisingly good when shot normally and excellent for my taste when pushed +1 stop.
Like the rest of Ilford/Harman/Kentmere products, Pan 200 is made in a facility with excellent manufacturing standards. I had no issues handling or developing this film.
FWIW, most film photographers can’t tell the difference between Kentmere and Ilford films, which leaves the photographer’s experience as one of the main considerations for selecting a particular stock. And my experience has been nothing short of happy.
Overall, I think that unless you’re planning to pull or push your film to the extremes, need finer grain, or another special property this stock may not have, there’s little reason to pay more for anything other than Kentmere Pan 200.
Price and availability.
Kentmere Pan 200 is reasonably easy to find online and offline, as it’s often distributed alongside other Ilford products. In 2026, it sells, on average, for $8.13 per 36exp. 35mm roll (and roughly the same for 120).
❤ By the way: Please consider making your Kentmere Pan 200 film purchase using this link so that this website may get a small percentage of that sale — at no extra charge for you — thanks!