Film Friday - April 14th, 2023. Bergger Pancro 400

We’re taking a trip to France for this Film Friday with the Bergger Pancro 400 line of black and white films. The whole line of Bergger products deserves attention as Bergger has been producing photographic materials such as film and paper, but also including chemistry, since the mid-1990s. Bergger’s roots actually go even farther back though, having descended from the French company Guillemot which was manufacturing photographic products in France over a hundred years ago.

But the history lesson is not the main reason you are here today. Let’s talk about film. Bergger Pancro 400 was introduced to the photographic world in 2016, initially only in large format sheets. Bergger had previously been selling another 400 ISO emulsion called BRF, which our research suggests originated from ORWO. With the launch of Pancro 400 Bergger brought something completely new to the world, and we haven’t shot another film that looks like it. In the murky world of European film manufacturing, where it can be difficult to tell what is made where and which films are the same in different boxes, Bergger stands out with a look that is all its own.

Bergger themselves describe the Pancro 400 with this statement: “BERGGER Pancro 400 is a two emulsion film , composed with silver bromide and silver iodide. They differ by the size of their grain. These properties allow a wide exposure latitude. Cristals (sic) are precipitated by double-jet process, under the control of a computer. The two emulsions are panchromatic, and are stabilized by high tech systems.

BERGGER Pancro 400 in sheets is coated on a 175 microns PET base. It is designed with an undercoated anti-halation layer which clarifies during processing, and a anti-curling layer.”

Ok, sounds great, but what does any of this mean? We dug in a bit, and let us explain what we know. There are a few ways to create a silver halide photosensitive emulsion. Silber Bromide tends to be more active though than silver iodide, so silver bromide emulsions are usually faster, while silver iodide is slower. We gather that Bergger Pancro, by using these two different speed emulsions, can better control exposure in both highlights and shadows. A guess that results seem to back up.

As far as the PET base, this refers to the polyester, as opposed to acetate, base that holds the emulsion. Polyester bases are stable and strong. They don’t tear easily. They also pipe light which can cause fogging, part of the reason Bergger uses an anti-halation layer under the emulsion as opposed to the back side of the base. This undercoated emulsion is a common technique for high resolution films as well. It also allows something else, such as an anti-curling layer, to be coated on the base.

Whew. Let’s take a break for some sample images.

One of the best qualities to the Bergger film is its exceptional tonal scale. Image made with a Hasselblad ELM.

Bergger’s soft contrast lends itself well for soft light, such as on rainy days. Triple exposure made on a Holga 120N.

Bergger also tends to handle highlights quite well. Image made with a Hasselblad 500C.

Alright, looking at the images and reading our captions has probably clued you in to what we like most about this film: it’s tonality. Bergger Pancro really has a remarkable tonal feel to it. It’s midtones almost shimmer and are rich in grays. Be careful, oftentimes a film with wonderful tonality can be misconstrued as flat. An extended range of tones is not generally as dramatic as a film that crunches the tones up, but spend time with it, dig into those grays and you will find that while it is subtler on the surface the depths of the image will often reward you.

But it is not just the grays of Pancro that we love. The way the film handles shadows and highlights is also worth mentioning. Somehow or other, most likely due to those twin emulsions, Bergger Pancro 400 does a magnificent job of capturing high contrast scenes, preserving detail in the highlights but still rendering midtones that are rich and shadows that (with a bit of work) don’t block up and lose detail but still look nice and dark. It is because of this that we have fallen in love with the Pancro film for nighttime cityscape photography. Check out the samples below.

One of our favorite uses of Bergger is for nighttime cityscapes where its unique abilities do a wonderful job of rendering a highly tonal image even with the extreme contrast found in such situations. Image made with a Pentax 67.

Try a roll of Bergger out at night sometime and see for yourself. Image made with a Hasselblad 500C.

Bergger is not without its pecularities and one of those seems to be a bit that the base of the film has a higher density to it than we are used to seeing. This extra density has the result that when scanned or printed shadows tend to look a bit muddier than you might like them. We often have to take our Bergger scans and bring the shadows down a bit to get them nice and dark. So if you try a roll of Bergger and the shadows look a tad washed out to you, don’t fret. A bit of readjustment will get those shadows where you want them and in the process you will end up with an image that still has nice detail in those shadows but also with highlights much freer of clipping than you might expect.

That is our Film Friday review of Bergger film! We can honestly find a reason to try pretty much every film, we are aware of that tendency of ours, but trust us when we say you ought to pick up a roll of Pancro if you have never shot it. It’s distinctiveness, wonderful tonality and availability in a variety of formats from 35mm to 8x10 make this a film that should be on the radar of more photographers.

To get you to the good stuff more quickly, we’ll give you a link directly to Bergger Pancro films on our website. Be forewarned, supply of Pancro can be hit and miss and we have on occasion experienced backorders that have lasted months. So if you like this film, make sure to keep a healthy supply of it!

Read more about Film Friday here.

We didn’t have many portrait samples shot on Bergger but here is one for you. Image made with a Hasselblad Flexbody.

One last nighttime cityscape image to convince you with. Seriously, go try this film out at night. Image made with a Hasselblad 500C.