Kodak Royal Pan 400

Royal Pan 4141 was Kodak's fast professional sheet film through the studio era of the 1950s and 1960s. Released in the early 1950s, it shared the rollfilm Tri-X emulsion at ASA 400 but came in sheet sizes that the dedicated sheet Tri-X (rated at ASA 320, a slightly different formulation) did not. Studio photographers who wanted the rollfilm look in a 4x5 holder bought Royal Pan.

Kodak coated 4141 on .007 inch Estar Thick base, which gave it the dimensional stability that view camera work demands. The data sheet listed moderate contrast, medium graininess, wide latitude, and panchromatic sensitivity that worked across daylight, tungsten, and electronic flash. In practice the film read as a grainier Tri-X, with the same forgiving curve and the same response to D-76 or HC-110 dilution B.

The grain is the catch. At 4x5 contact print it does not matter; nobody prints sheet-grain at that size and worries. Enlarged to 11x14 or larger, Royal Pan reads noticeably more textured than Tri-X sheet at 320, and considerably grainier than Plus-X Pan Professional in the same format. For press shooters going to halftone the prints in a newspaper, the texture was invisible by the time the dot pattern landed.

Available during the run in 4x5, 5x7, 8x10, and 11x14 sheets, in 70mm long rolls, in 3.25 inch rolls, and in film packs. The film pack format let studio shooters expose multiple sheets quickly without reloading holders.

Kodak quietly let 4141 go in the mid 1970s. Expiration dates on surviving boxes do not appear past 1976. The studio-portrait market had drifted toward Vericolor color negative and toward Tri-X 320 sheet for the B&W work that remained. Anything you find now is fifty years old, with base fog and a stop or two of speed loss.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.31. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 30-second exposure becomes about 90 seconds at the negative. For expired stock, add another stop on top and bracket; the fog will hide some of the shadow detail anyway.