Kentmere Pan 200 Review: Your New Daily Driver Film

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Kentmere Pan 200 Review: Your New Daily Driver Film

Being a film photographer is an expensive hobby. Sure, it’s easy to get started with the relatively low cost of hardware but film and developing costs (even if you’re doing it yourself) add up fast. That’s why Kentmere Pan 200 is so welcome: it’s good, it’s readily available, and it’s cheap at $8 per roll.

Kentmere Pan 200 Review: A Brand-New Film

In 2025, it’s not exactly rare to get new film, but it is rare to get new film that can be described as a “daily driver.” Sure, we see unusual films with odd or specialized color profiles, but they aren’t typically film emulsions that photographers would want to use roll after roll, back to back. That’s what makes Kentmere Pan 200 special: it is exactly that kind of film and, given its low price compared to the market, is also affordable. That’s a perfect combination.

A plastic skeleton sits on a swing hanging from a tree in a yard, with a large ball above it. Houses and parked cars are visible in the background. The image is in black and white.

Pan 200 fits in between the existing Pan 100 and Pan 400 Kentmere films which are Harman’s more affordable options aimed at students. Pan 100 and Pan 400 are, as I’ve been told, known for having lower contrast, which is exacerbated by bright light. In its announcement of Pan 200 earlier this month, Harman promised that Pan 200 would bring noticeably better contrast, which immediately caught my eye.

Black and white photo of a long outdoor stone staircase with metal railings on both sides, surrounded by dense leafy bushes and trees. The stairs lead upward, disappearing out of view at the top.

Harman’s new film is available in 35mm (in 36 and 24 exposure DX coded cassettes and 35mm bulk length rolls) as well as 120 roll film. For this review, Harman provided two 24-exposure rolls of 35mm which I loaded into my Sigma Mark-I equipped with a Super Takumar 28mm f/3.5.

Kentmere Pan 200 Review: How It Shoots

I really like black and white film (likely due to a strong influence of my father’s work) and for the past year have been shooting mostly Fujifilm Acros (I and II), Oriental Seagull 100 and 400, and Kodak T-Max. Kentmere Pan 200 fits nicely into this selection since it’s not exactly like any of them. It has a nice soft, medium-grain profile and the result isn’t too sharp, which is a characteristic of T-Max that some photographers don’t like. It is, however, sharper than what I’ve seen from Oriental Seagull.

Black and white photo of a church with a tall steeple and cross, large windows, and an entrance facing a quiet street. A sign is visible near the entrance. Trees and clouds appear in the background. — In extremely bright light, Pan 200 maintains a good level of contrast in without losing shadows wholly into black. There is a surprising amount of dynamic range here, considering the conditions.

A bit more on the grain structure: it looks how 200 ISO should look. It’s not as smooth as 100 and not as harsh as 400 typically is (I say typically since T-Max breaks that rule). It just looks really good, especially when combined with the heightened levels of contrast.

Close-up of a leafy plant with sunlight filtering through a window behind it, casting shadows and creating a soft, blurred background.

A man walks past a large roadside sign for "Ah Fong Kitchen," a Chinese restaurant, with trees and additional buildings visible in the background. The sign advertises orders to go and a lunch special.

Yes, Harman did not disappoint: I dig the boosted contrast in Pan 200. Midtones and highlighs pop against shadows and the blacks tend to look quite dramatic. That’s a strength of T-Max, and while I would say Kentmere Pan 200 isn’t quite as contrasty, it is significantly more so than either Acros or Oriental Seagull.

A black-and-white photo of a quiet park pathway lined with tall trees, a wooden bench on the left, and a wooden fence on the right, with sunlight filtering through the leaves.

Close-up black and white photo of jagged-edged leaves on a tree, with sunlight filtering through. The background is blurred, showing faint outlines of trees, sky, and a street.

While Kentmere Pan 200 can dip into total black if you want it to, after shooting two rolls, I found that it doesn’t do this too quickly. I tend to shoot about stop above and below 0 EV pretty often and when I’m at 0 EV and +1 EV, shadows tend to retain a good amount of detail before dropping to pure black only when shadows are particularly dim. One stop over has the contrast rendition of Acros or Seagull while going one stop under, Pan 200 basically mimics the contrast profile of T-Max, which shows some particularly good versatility. I really like the idea of having one film stock that I can manipulate to my liking depending on the situation.

A small, outdoor free library shaped like a house stands among lush greenery. Shelves inside the glass-fronted box are filled with books, and a sign is posted on the bottom shelf.

A black-and-white photo of a busy airport terminal shows people walking on either side of a moving walkway under a high, geometric skylight ceiling. A caution sign is visible at the start of the walkway.

The 200 ISO is nice, too. With my older and typically slower glass, I’ve found that I’m able to shoot in more types of low light than I can with 100 ISO film and do so at faster shutter speeds where I’m more confident that I am going to land a sharp image. On the flip side, it’s not as sensitive as ISO 400, obviously, so I can shoot in bright light without having to worry about stopping down too far on my lenses since my max shutter speed isn’t particularly fast on the old cameras I gravitate to.

Three people sit on a blanket in an open grassy field, surrounded by houses and trees, with a forest in the background under a partly cloudy sky. The photo is in black and white.

A wooden wall covered in white graffiti with words and phrases like “HOPE,” “Believe,” “YOU MATTER,” “STAY,” “LOVE BECOMES OUR LEGACY,” and other partially visible positive messages.

A New Black and White Daily Driver

I am really happy with the look of the photos captured on Kentmere Pan 200. The contrast and grain structure are both very pleasing and the fact this comes in an $8 roll (36 exposures) makes it the second cheapest film I’ve used in the past year behind the dirt-cheap $5 per roll Oriental Seagull. And while I really like Seagull for the grain structure, I find the sharpness and contrast lacking. While I certainly can add the latter back in, I’m locked to whatever I get with the former.

That’s why Pan 200 feels so good to me. It’s a great balance of all the factors I like in a film and the photos look how my final edits to Acros do when I add more contrast back in post-production. With Kentmere Pan 200, photos are to my liking straight off the negative.

A sign reading "John Street Cafe" is mounted on a wall. In the background, there are street signs for N Lombard St and N John Ave, parked cars, and some trees. The photo is in black and white.

Are There Alternatives?

Chris Niccolls and I both like the aforementioned Oriental Seagull, but it’s difficult to find in North America and, as mentioned, it lacks contrast and isn’t as sharp. Acros is significantly more expensive at $12.50 per roll and isn’t as contrasty either.

I think the most direct competitor is Kodak Tri-X, which costs about $2.00 more per roll than Pan 200. Tri-X brings even more contrast to the party, which some may or may not like, and Pan 200 doesn’t have the level of sharpness Kodak brings either. Some photographers don’t like that about Tri-X though, and for those who want a bit more grit to their black and white film shots, I think they’ll find a lot to like about Pan 200.

Should You Buy It?

Yes. Kentmere Pan 200 will likely be my most shot film of the next year as I restock my black and white options because not only is it easy to find and is affordable, the quality of the negative is some of the most pleasant on the market. It just hits every note.

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