Bergger Pancro 400 in Pyrocat-HD?

[Jim Noel]

Looking at the curves it seems that it has a longer toe than say HP5+, but also a longer straight line that builds up to a higher optical density. Different developers for each company running the tests, mind you. I've been thinking a lot about this film and wonder if it is indeed best exposed at 200ISO to get that extra shadow detail. I think if doing that it would be a film more suited to wet printing, as the optical density might end up being too high for most scanners save the absolute best to extract the best from it. D-Max is always an issue with CCD scanners like Imacon Flextight / Hasselblad.



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I have not tried te fil,. but looking at the curve it definitely is closer to 160-200 than 400 when developed in D-76. The curve also indicates it is not flat.

[Tim V]

I'm told Bergger are about to release a 'super fine grain' developer. Film sensitivity will be reduced to 160ISO. Not sure what it's co-branded as, but suspect an Adox product?

[Tim V]

[Tim V]

I received my replacement box on Pancro 8x10” last week and today got around to exposing two sheets of the same scene and exposure.

Going from Bergger’s recommendation for Pyrocat-HD mixed 1:1:100 at 24 degrees with a time of 17mins, I estimated a with a dilution of 2:2:100 at 21 degrees as being 14mins in the Jobo with constant agitation.

The metered exposure was 4 seconds at 200iso, so going by Bergger’s data sheet I exposed for 8 seconds.

The resultant negative is still drying-man this stuff curls!-and it looks as if it might be a little under cooked. For the other exposure I’ll try a time of 16.5mins. Shadow detail looks ok though, so 200iso seems about right. 160iso might be safer though I suspect, but I’m not doing highly controlled tests.

Base fog / density of this batch looks better than last, so that’s great.

I like the look of this film so will report back, hopefully with some good recommendations to share.

[Tim V]

Quick update:

All looks good so far, although haven't shot any clear skies to test flat tone. But I am pretty confident there are no problems with this new batch of Pancro.

Attached is a V800 flatbed scan of an 8x10" negative (800dpi), which was processed with Pyrocat-HD 2:2:100 for 14 mins @21 degrees in a Jobo 3005 expert tank, 40RPM. This is only a shot to test processing time, so not a 'real' image. It was exposed at 200ISO for the shadows using my usual method of making an incident reading in an important shadow area (it works for me!) 5min pre-soak, water stop for 1min and 6min fix. The light reading was 4 seconds at f45, so estimating reciprocity I used HP5+ compensation and exposed for 8 seconds. I've also attached a 100% screen grab taken from Lightroom.

Looking at the negative, there is the expected higher level of base density as compared to HP5+ etc. Before scanning I thought I might need to process the next sheet at 15 or 16 mins, as it looked a bit flat (taking into consideration the base density) but the scan turned out perfect without much need for tweaking. Shadow detail is pretty much on par with what I get with HP5+ rated at 320ISO, Pyrocat-HD 2:2:100 for 10min @21 degrees C.

Grain is quite a bit more visible than HP5+, but I actually like it's character. It's quite vintage looking and adds a bit of charming atmosphere. Maybe the long exposure compensating for reciprocity has pushed the contrast up a bit, I'm not sure. I just know I like what I see and look forward to using the rest of the box, trying to find my perfect development time with experimentation.



PS: It seems forum software has compressed the attachments quite a bit, but hopefully you get the idea.