Pulling Bergger Pancro 400 to 100 ISO

I like grain. If you're reading this, you probably like grain too. Bergger Pancro 400 produces perfect grain and beautiful gradients between the lightest and darkest parts of your image. I'm drawn to a medium contrast image with both highlight and shadow detail. There's a place for Kodak Tri-X pushed three stops, but I don't live in that place. Bergger Pancro 400 adds a tool to my toolbox, like a chisel or blacksmith's hammer. It gives you room to shape your image in scanning or editing.

I wanted to see if I could produce even more shadow detail, so I've started experimenting with pulling the film one or two stops. I'm quite pleased with the results. You lose some grain, but in subjects with a large gap between the brightest and darkest part of the image, you gain back some detail.

In short, Bergger Pancro 400 pulled to 100 gives you a flat canvas to accent with the desired amount of contrast. When you pull black and white film, you essentially over expose and under develop, giving you a flat negative with detail in both the highlights and the shadows.

I developed the following images in Kodak Portra HC-110 (1+31), measured at 16 ml developer + 484 ml water. I developed at 68* for 7 minutes.

I exposed the following studio shots at F2.4 @ 1/30.

Here are some examples I shot outside at various shutter speeds. Most of these shots were taken under a bright blue sky, yet it doesn’t get blown out, even when half the image is in the shadows.

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