Your favorite 35mm B&W Film Stock?

puredrifting

puredrifting

Major Contributor
Hi all:

I am in the process of testing and evaluating current 35mm B&W film. What is your favorite B&W stock and why? I am only interested in real B&W films, not C-41 process pseudo B&W stocks.

I am familiar with the basic Kodak stocks, having shot Tri-X and TMAX for decades. But I have never tried any of the Fuji or Ilford B&W stocks. Which stock do you like and why?

Thanks,

Dan
 
Ilford/Delta 3200 ISO B&W is pretty amazing. Super clean and nice grain structure for such a high ISO. Nice shoulder and knee curves, not too contrasty.
 
Hi Andrew:

How would you compare the Ilford 3200 grain structure to the grain in Tri-X Pan 400?

Thanks,

Dan
 
When I first learned b&w self developing I learned on Fuji Acros 100. A very good film with minimal grain and good contrast. Ilford HP5 is another film I use quite a bit. I love the grain structure this film produces.
 
Hey Dan, I really haven't shot a lot of Tri-X so I'm not sure about a comparison. I'm sure someone else could offer some better info on it.
 
taking a class at the moment using Ilford HP5 400iso, according to the teacher (who is a pro photographer) Ilford is somewhat of a professional standard
 
I just bought a roll of Ilford to try, I will let you know how it works. I also bought some other former Eastern block stocks like Efke and a few others to try, just for fun.

Dan
 
I just finished a class on developing my own B&W negatives. I can't wait to get some scanned and posted. We shot some TriX 35mm and developed them. Turned out great considering this was the first time I've done this.
 
So here is a shot on TriX that I developed myself. :)

It looks like crap b/c I don't have a photo scanner yet. I used my iPhone with the Flashligh app as my back light for the negative. My scanner only goes to 1200dpi, so the quality is not great. Plus you can see the individual pixels from the iPhone screen scanned through the neg. Oh well. It was fun to play with it, and as I get more negs I'll likely get an Epson V700 or something.

As a side note, even though it did not scan well.....the flashlight app makes a fantastic light table for viewing film.

3319472328_000841127f_b.jpg
 
I actually was happy with that aspect of it. And my negs turned out great. I was just unhappy with the resolution and sharpness of the digital image, but it was to be expected considering the process. Doesn't look too bad if you don't blow it up too big. Thanks for the complement though. :)
 
Don't know if are dead set on developing and scanning your own, which can be fun, but time consuming. If you are not set on doing your own, Ken Rockwell turned me on to a great lab in San Diego called North Coast Photographic Services who do real B&W developing and high res scans to CD pretty inexpensively.

Here is the link if you want to check them out, there is a .pdf link right on the front page that lists their "Ken Rockwell" prices, they do lower res and super high res scans and the scans look amazing. They do all of their developing by hand with the dunk tank, no belt fed machine that will scratch up your negs. It was a good tip, I am very happy with them.

http://www.northcoastphoto.com/

Dan
 
I've heard about them. At the moment developing my own and scanning them is part of the fun of shooting film for me. If I get tired of it, then I'll likely start having someone else do it for me. I hope to start having time to play with printing too.

We have a few good developers here locally that I have process my E6 stuff that do a great job with B&W too, so I would likely use them over shipping it somewhere.
 
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