Ilford Selochrome Pan

Selochrome Pan was the panchromatic update to Ilford's Selochrome line, the product name carried over from Ilford's Selo-branded mass-market line. The original Selochrome had been around since the 1930s as a fast roll-film orthochromatic stock for amateurs. The Pan version added red sensitivity and lifted the speed to medium-fast for general photography, and carried that role through the late 1960s.

Speed history on Selochrome Pan confuses anyone reading old British photo magazines. Speed history confuses anyone reading old British photo magazines. Sources place the panchromatic Selochrome line at 160 ASA from its introduction around 1960, with the orthochromatic predecessor carrying a separate lower-speed rating in earlier decades. Photographers who remember Selochrome Pan fondly tend to be people who shot it through the 1960s, when the 160 rating was the published standard.

The character was middle-of-the-road cubic grain, contrasty by modern standards but not punishingly so, with a curve that gave good midtone separation and held highlights well for portraiture. Closer to FP3 in tonal feel than to the punchier HP3, finer-grained than HP3 at the cost of two stops of speed. Available in 35mm, 120, 127, and sheet sizes.

Ilford recommended ID-11 as the standard developer. Microphen for push work, where Selochrome Pan would honestly handle one stop up to ISO 320. May & Baker Promicrol, the wedding-trade developer gone since the 1980s, gave it clean shadow detail.

Production wound down by the early 1970s as HP4 displaced it. Freezer-stock rolls turn up in old camera shops and estate sales. Anything stored at room temperature since the 1970s will show heavy base fog and substantial speed loss. Rate surviving rolls at 64 and accept softer contrast than the original prints showed.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.31, the same baseline as HP5+ today. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A 30-second meter reading becomes about 90 seconds at the negative. For interior available-light work at small apertures, that threshold comes up routinely.