Fictional Clarity in Shadows – Wrestling with Pan F 50

There’s a stillness in Pan F 50 that deceives.

A promise of clarity, of razor-fine detail and smooth tonal gradients, but underneath lies a fragile tension. Shooting with it is like asking the light to slow down — and then blaming it when it trips. In the darkroom, it’s even worse. The film curls like it's trying to escape, fighting the reel, fighting the water, fighting me. I used to think the distortions came from the lens. From the scanner. From the chemicals. But I’m starting to realise the distortions are mine too.

I watch as the negatives dry, their pristine, hyper-real edges betraying how difficult it was to coax them into being. There’s something about Pan F’s almost clinical precision that makes the imperfections louder — any tremor in exposure, any lapse in development, shows up like a scar. Highlights blow like flashes of memory I wasn’t ready to look at. Shadows pool with too much weight, holding shapes that never existed.

It messes with my head. The slower ISO forces me to be careful, patient — and I hate how it reveals my own restlessness. The images are almost perfect. Almost true. But I see ghosts in them. Warped limbs where the light bent wrong. Halos where my mind must’ve wandered during agitation. Maybe I didn’t invert it properly. Maybe I didn’t invert myself properly.

There’s a kind of distortion that’s not visible in the grain — it’s embedded in the act of trying to control something that resists control. And that’s what Pan F does. It resists. It punishes. But when it cooperates, it sings in this impossible frequency that feels more real than reality. It’s addictive.

Still, every time I process a roll, it feels like a ritual with no guarantee. Like summoning something delicate and volatile from under my skin. Every frame is a test. Not of the film. Of me.

And sometimes the image that comes out isn’t the one I shot — it’s the one I deserved.

— Negative Ritual