Fomapan 200 Creative Film in PMK Pyro

PMK Pyro is known to work well with older film formulations. The newer tabular grain film (Kodak Tmax and Ilford Delta) have less silver in them and, consequently, less staining with Pyro. I have had good luck with Ilford FP4+ in PMK Pyro. I had been looking forward to trying some of the European films such as Fomapan and Fortepan with PMK Pyro.
This week, I took a trip to the Audubon Zoo with some Fomapan 200 Creative, a film manufactured in the Czech Republic. In researching this film, one web site states that it is an advanced T-grain film. Foma does not specify this on their spec sheet. Whatever the case, I was not expecting good results from this film. After developing some test shots, I was pleasantly surprised. The film stains well (N.B. - it is developed with a dilution twice as concentrated as the 1:2:100 generally used for PMK Pyro) and the tonality is quite good without any granularity problems.

The day was fairly bright, so I was expecting blocked up shadows and blown highlights, but the tonal gradation was better than I anticipated. Enlargements from this negative show the granularity to be more than acceptable.

There is grain, but the staining of the pyro appears to keep it in check.
Sharpness is also quite good for a 200 ISO film. At $2.50 a roll, the combination of Fomapan 200 and PMK Pyro should appeal to frugal photographers.