Spent Sunday night developing another roll of film, with my trusty old 2nd gen iPod and old 2007-2010 favourites for company. This was my 9th roll – I’ve never shot or developed Bergger Pancro 400 before. The manufacturer’s instructions called for rinsing the film before developing (which I dutifully did), and also required a longer than normal fixing time (6 mins). I used Rodinal (1+25) as developer; 8 min total developing time, with 30 sec agitation to start with, followed by 10 sec at the top of each minute.

Unfortunately I ended up with scratches over several shots again, which is a huge pain, because I think the light and composition in a few of them are pretty great. Almost wish I’d had it developed professionally, but I reckon making mistakes helps you improve. I think the scratches either happened when I was loading the film in the changing bag; I misaligned it at first and had to unspool it, and rewind it back into the film cannister, then try and get it onto the spool again. Or it happened when I was finger squeegeeing it before drying. They say you should just let it airdry if you’ve used a wetting agent (which I did; Ilfotol in this case), but I’ve also ended up with watermarks in the past. Scratches are more likely to have happened pre-development, but maybe I’ll lay off squeegeeing anyway on the next one. It’d be easier to rewash and redry, than to fix scratches. I know Silverfast software offers a fix, but I can’t be bothered to try and figure out how to use it at the moment.

I’m sharing my favourite shots here.

I’d definitely go for this film again. Not too grainy, and I like the level of contrast it offers.