Forte BPF 200

Forte BPF 200 is the medium-speed B&W film from the Hungarian Forte Photochemical Industry in Vac. The factory has its own history worth knowing: Kodak built it in 1922, sold it to Hungarian General Credit Bank in mid 1947, and the bank reopened it as Forte the same year; the company was nationalized the following year and ran as a state enterprise through the Cold War. Production continued through the Cold War and into the early 2000s. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and stopped manufacturing in January 2007.

The 200-speed Forte coating (sold under its own Fortepan 200 label and as Bergger BPF 200 in France and the US) is a panchromatic cubic-grain emulsion on an acetate base, rated ASA 200 with about half a stop of latitude either side. Latitude that narrow is uncommon today; HP5+ gives you three stops of slop in either direction. Forte does not. Meter carefully or pay for it in lost detail.

The look sits between Fomapan 200 and a vintage Agfa stock. Reviewers describe the mid-tones as creamy and the grain as well-mannered for the speed, with one particular tic: Fortepan curls. It curls hard enough that negatives spring out of binder pages and roll up on themselves. Drum-flatten before scanning if you can.

Developers that work well include Rodinal at 1:50, ID-11 stock or 1:1, XTOL, and Ilfosol 3. Rodinal gives the sharpest grain. XTOL keeps the grain tightest. The film does not push particularly well. Box speed or a third under tends to give the cleanest results.

Remaining stock comes from freezers. Some sellers still have sealed 35mm and 120 rolls and the occasional 4x5 sheet box, but quality varies depending on how the original buyer stored it. Expect base fog on warm-stored examples and clean negatives on cold-stored ones. Prices have crept up since 2018 as the supply dried out.

Reciprocity exponent is 1.31, the standard cubic-grain baseline. Zone Light Meter applies the correction past one second. A metered 30-second exposure becomes about 90 seconds on the negative; a four-minute architectural reading stretches closer to twelve minutes. The math matches Tri-X and HP5+ closely, which is convenient if you are mixing stocks on the same shoot.