Prestige Variable CM, one of several pleasantly stout fiber-based papers manufactured in France by Bergger, has a richness and luminosity that has almost become a thing of the past. For those who like really thick prints, Prestige Silver Supreme is coated on an extra premium-weight 100 percent cotton rag stock. Photos © 1999, Tom Fuller, All Rights Reserved

As French-made Bergger black and white film and paper meet virtually every requirement of the exacting large format worker, "Fine Materials for Fine Photography" would also be a suitable title. Bergger BPF 200 film, available in a wide range of standard and specialty sheet sizes, is a very close replacement for Kodak's much-missed Super XX. Pair it with the dense blacks, gentle tonal gradation, and thick base of Bergger Prestige, a line of silver-rich papers able to hold their own against any premium offering on the market, and you have a combo that impresses even those of us who remember when Kodachrome came in red--or was it yellow--metal cans.

Like Kodak Super XX, Bergger BPF 200 provides a nearly straight-line density gradient that allows wide exposure control with almost any developer, a particularly endearing quality to Zone System practitioners who expand and contract scene values on a picture-by-picture basis. The panchromatic emulsion offers good resolving power, exceptional exposure latitude, and linear color sensitivity, the last making BPF 200 an excellent choice for dye transfer and color separation work. In everyday pictorial photography, this linearity translates to accurate gray-tone rendering of blue skies without a yellow filter over the camera lens.

BPF 200 has been called a "thick emulsion" film, a misnomer for the traditional design in which hunks of silver halide are suspended in a single gelatin layer. Unlike newer approaches that use multiple layers and/or platelet-shaped particles, "old technology" manufacturing relied only upon particle size to determine film speed. The advantage is that these emulsions work well with many developers and processing methods, including pyro, for maximum creative flexibility. While the grain of such films may be slightly coarser than that of new ones, the small degree of enlargement required of large format negatives makes this of consequence only to 35mm and medium format users.

In my tests BPF 200 came through with flying colors, being able to record an exceptionally wide subject brightness range with normal development at its labeled speed. The film is rated at ISO 200, a figure that proved to be a good starting point for producing brilliant negatives with excellent shadow detail using tray development for nine minutes in Kodak D-76 (1:1) at 68°F. The manufacturer's starting points with other soups are 4.5 minutes in Kodak HC 110 (Dilution B), 18 minutes in Rodinal 1+50, and 6.5 to 11 minutes in PMK Pyro. Reciprocity correction is not required for exposures from 1/1000 to 1/2 sec.