Bergger Pancro 400 in Rodinal

Shot my first roll of Berggers new film a while back, and digitized the negs yesterday. Developed in Rodinal 1+50 for 22 minutes at 20C. Whoa, 22 minutes? That was a long ass time. I got bored of agitating after a while and got sloppy towards the end. Probably was one inversion every 2 minutes instead of 30sec or whatever.

First impressions are:

  • It's a bit grainy, isn't it? Sure its ISO400 and I developed in rodinal but.. still.. pretty rough grain?

  • I should've shot it at ISO320, I feel that everything is ever so slightly underexposed

  • Not a huge fan of the skin tones, the two portraits I have

  • It seems to hold up well in the highlights, if you look at the third shot here below, of the entrance to the hospital, in the upper left corner - look at the structure of the brighter part of the building. You can see the different shades, textures. Look at the shadow part straight below, it's all pretty murky

Interesting fact, the building in these shots is an abandoned sanitarium in northern Sweden for TBC patients. It is very very large and has been just sitting in the middle of a small village now for a decade, mostly forgotten.

 

First look at Svema FN125 expired in -94

Alright, first roll shot with the Svema FN125 I bought a couple of weeks ago. When I got the rolls, I thought the packaging was peculiar. Then I read another review about Svema film here where it says "Firstly, the film is provided as a roll without a cassette. That’s how it always used to be". So I bought some reuseable cassettes off ebay and didn't bother opening my films. Turns out however, that my films do already come in plastic reuseable cassettes. Well, more for me. Pretty cool though, they have the screw on top so they are easy to use again.

FN125 is a ISO125 film. It says ASA125 on the back. Wikipedia however says it is a 125 GOST/ISO 160 film. There seems to be variations on Svema film depending on when they were manufactured. Mine expired in -94, that might be a clue of sorts. Anyhow, I started shooting at ISO100 (who was I kidding). Dropped down to ISO80, then ISO64.

I developed this first test in Rodinal 1+50, for 12min with less agitation than I normally do. 1-2 min between inversions.

The film came out with lots and lots of base fog, and severly underexposed. I would guess it needs another full stop of light, and I probably should cut development time with a minute or two. I wish I had some HC110 at hand, alas I don't.. Maybe Ilford DD-X works well with expired films, does anybody know?

Here are some sample shots from todays expirement. To be continued..