Why does Slower B&W Film Have a Darker Look?

[Thomas Bertilsson]

without reading everythings thats been posted since my last comment im gonna go off on a limb and say that its not that its a dark film, its that maybe we (by we i mean the others and I who think its a dark film) have discovered its slower than rated speed.

i just shot a roll at ISO 32 and it seems to be doing a bit better, not clipping highlights either.

You control highlights in development. You can probably expose the film at an exposure index of 12 if you wanted to, as long as you make sure you stop development in time the highlights will remain intact.
'Clipping highlights' is a function of how you process your film, and has very little to do with the film itself.

You are correct that exposing the film at an exposure index other than the rated box speed will change how the film looks, and this is how we find out how to use a certain film to our liking.

[Thomas Bertilsson]

If you give it a strong source of light from one direction it will block up where it is bright and will flatten out where there is less light.

That is called a wide brightness range, which is other words for having high general contrast.

The more contrast you have in the scene you photograph, the more tonal values you have to capture in your negative, and you have to adjust how you expose and process the negative to make it printable.
Deep shadows with very dark tones form in shadows of directional light. How do you capture shadow detail? By exposure!
So, the deeper the shadow you want to capture, the more you have to expose. Subsequently, the extra exposure given must be compensated for in processing by either giving less agitation, less developing time, or a combination thereof.

This is true with any film, but extra pronounced with a film like Pan-F+ due to its nature of having more built-in contrast than most. This is what makes Pan-F+ more difficult to use; it is simply a bit more temperamental in its behavior. But with enough practice, it can definitely be controlled, and you can have negatives of normal contrast.

The beauty of Pan-F+ is the ability to make a print of extremely high quality, even from small negatives. And you can use the inherent contrast to your advantage if you like that quality in a film.