Good news: we’ve got a brand new film emulsion in the form of Bergger Pancro 400 . This black and white film is a brand new emulsion–and Bergger is promising fine grain, and lots of sharpness in addition to lots of detail rendition.

Sounds a bit like Kodak Tri-X, right? But it isn’t.

According to Bergger’s website, Bergger Pancro 400 is:

“two emulsions based on silver bromide and silver iodide which differ from one another in the size of their grain. This allows the film to reach an extremely wide exposure posture. The crystals are precipitated by a double-jet process controlled by a computer. Both emulsions are panchromatic and are stabilized by systems that are among the most elaborate. BERGGER Pancro400 in 135 is coated on an acetate substrate of 135 microns and has DX coding. It has an anti-halo layer which becomes clear during the treatment, and an anti-tiling layer on the back of the film.”

Even better: if their technical data sheet PDF is to be believed, Bergger Pancro 400 is going to come in 35mm, 120, and large format emulsions.

You can see more image samples on Bergger’s website.

According to the company’s website, Bergger Pancro 400 is also going to be a very versatile film. They’re claiming that it can be pulled to ISO 100 and pushed to ISO 1600. This sounds just like Kodak Tri-X and to a certain point Ilford Delta. While this is going to take a while to catch on, I think we can all state with total certainty that there are very few digital presets that will be able to copy something like this.

Despite lots of the photos here showing landscapes and environmental scenes, Bergger Pancro 400 seems like it will be best for portraiture due to the tonality and the gradation. Or if you’re shooting landscapes, it will be interesting to see what the scenes look like with a graduated ND filter on.

These images are Copyright Aurélien DUKE