Favourite 400 speed B+W film?

Favourite 400 speed B+W film?

  • Kodak TriX 400

    Votes: 858 41.1%

  • Kodak TMAX 400

    Votes: 238 11.4%

  • Ilford Delta 400

    Votes: 138 6.6%

  • Ilford HP5 Plus 400

    Votes: 636 30.4%

  • Efke KB400

    Votes: 12 0.6%

  • Fomapan 400

    Votes: 38 1.8%

  • Fuji Neopan 400

    Votes: 328 15.7%

  • Rollei R3 400

    Votes: 15 0.7%

  • Forte Fortepan 400

    Votes: 2 0.1%

  • Arista EDU Ultra 400

    Votes: 22 1.1%

  • Arista II 400

    Votes: 9 0.4%

  • Another unlisted 400

    Votes: 112 5.4%
  • Total voters
    2,090
Hands down it's Tri-X. Blacks and tones like no other film, and you can shoot it at all kinds of speeds. Tricky for portraits though. Next would be Ilford FP4. Used to shoot HP5 but all the shots I took w/ that look gray compared to the Tri-X. A fellow member here sent me some Arista Premium DX 400, and from what I can gather it's rebadged Tri-X or Plus X at much cheaper prices, so really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
 
Steve M. said:
Used to shoot HP5 but all the shots I took w/ that look gray compared to the Tri-X.
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Then either:

(a) You were over exposing it, or
(b) You were under developing it, or
(c) If darkroom printing, you needed a harder grade of paper, or
(d) If scanning, you needed to adjust the curve in Photoshop, or
(e) A combination of the above.

Each film/developer combination has its own characteristics but you can get as much/little contrast out of any of them as you want.
 
Ever since I discovered the superb Neopan 400 years ago, I've completely abandoned Tri-X and HP-5. Delta 400 is a close second.

Russ
 
New rollei films are great for landscape

New rollei films are great for landscape

martin s said:
Do you know if the "new" Rolleis will be different from APX?

martin
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Very different. The Rollei Retro 80s, SuperPan 200 and Retro 400s are in fact the Agfa Aviphot Pan 80, 200 and 400s repackaged in the photo formats.

being designed for aerial photography, they present moderate grain, extended spectral sensitivity in the infra-red and high definition.

I have experience with the SuperPan 200 and retro 400s. Both are excellent. I cannot wait to try the Retro 80s.

What I found in landscape photography is that, combined yith a red filter, these films cut through haze and make it nearly disapear. I currently use the SuperPan 200 in my RZ67 for landscape and like it very much. I have had excellent results with the 400s in my M6. The biggest quality they have for me is very high acutance.
 
well I have only been doing
Arista Premium 400 / Rodinal 1:50
Neopan 1600 / Rodinal 1:50....J'ADORE !

I would Like to Try: HP4 and Rodinal next....
 
I figured you were after a favorite silver-based 400 speed film and voted for Tri-X, which I love.

The truth is, however, that lately I've been shooting a lot more BW400CN - Literiter, if that's the photographic equivalent of wine from a box, then pour me a glass... It's got beautiful tonality and my Coolscan V-ED does not exaggerate its grain, which is the unfortunate effect I get from scanning Tri-X at a resolution anywhere above 1200 dpi.

Still, they are two beautiful films, IMHO.
 
I'm slowly running out of my stock of APX400 and because it's not available anymore I need to choose a new "standard" ASA 400 film for me. I've been reading this thread with great interest and I even wrote down some notes! I'm using primarily D-76 or Rodinal for developing.

I guess It's time to do some film testing!
 
Russ said:
Ever since I discovered the superb Neopan 400 years ago, I've completely abandoned Tri-X and HP-5. Delta 400 is a close second.
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Russ, I'm curious as to why you say Delta 400 is a close second. I actually prefer Delta 400 to Neopan 400 because to me it seems sharper and with better highlight control. With Neopan, it's rather easy to blow the highlights,which obviously isn't a problem with controlled lighting.
 
It's a bit hard to choose... I've done a lot of Tri-X and I like it, but the last year I've been shooting HP5+ and souping it in Xtol 1+1. Works great, and as Lawrence wrote, you can get what you want from just about any film if you do it right. I have picked up some Kentmere 400, but I am still on a learning curve. At the moment it feels a bit dull compared to Hp5+ at iso 400, developed at 12:30 minutes in Xtol 1+1. I am thinking of extending the dev time a smidge to 13 minutes and see if that helps. Or possibly, downrate it to 320.
 
Used to be a heavy XP1/XP2 user but moved onto to HP5 with ID11 these days, if only because if I take a roll of XP2 to a local processor here they look at me like I have two heads! Don't think there are many XP2 users round these parts!
 
Ilford Pan 400

Ilford Pan 400

I really like ilford Pan 400 which we can get here in China. I have heard its the same as HP5 but for somereason i get much finer grain and less contrast than with HP5. Scans really well and retains good detail for postprocessing.

Tri-x is still the best looking but i rarely use it since ilford Pan 400 is 2/3 the price.

I still use Tri-x for 1600 though but Pan 400 for everyday stuff.
 
Mablo said:
I'm slowly running out of my stock of APX400 and because it's not available anymore I need to choose a new "standard" ASA 400 film for me. I've been reading this thread with great interest and I even wrote down some notes! I'm using primarily D-76 or Rodinal for developing.

I guess It's time to do some film testing!
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As you are testing for a new film (always exciting) I thought I may share some of my experiences with the 'big players' in the lineup.

Well, I was using APX a while back for a short time and found that although the tones were lovely (done in Rodinal 1:50) I discovered that the true ISO was closer to 200 than 400 done in this developer. In addition I have read that it is a slower film than TRI-X, so I finished with this film because if I am using a 400 ISO film I want to garner that speed. I don't want to be down a stop before the game has even started.

So, if perhaps you were to consider choosing one of the three 'big players':

Kodak TRI-X
Neopan 400
Ilford HP5

then here are some personal observations I found from souping them in both D76 and Rodinal.

Neopan 400 the finest grain of the three. It also displayed the highest contrast, hence giving that hard hitting photo journalist look.

Ilford HP5 had the largest grain and was closest to the older emulsions than the other two. The contrast was the lowest of the three. I am starting to slowly convert to this film after using TRI-X for so long. The new TRI-X seems to have lost something when it was revamped, namely that mongrel grain it was famous for.

So, Kodak TRI-X's grain was somewhere in between the other two and thecontrast was close to the Neopan 400. It also seems to be the most tolerant of exposure/developer errors (like increase in temp/time). I think that these are some of the reasons that it has been favored for so long by documentary/journalist photographers. It is also robust.

I really like Neopan 1600 but found the contrast sometimes prohibitive if using it on a sunny day. It is a great cloudy day film exposed at 600-800, in D76 1:1 for 7-8 minutes.

I have recently used Kentmere 400, but ruled it out as it seemed flatter and there was is not enough supporting literature/user feedback to change over.

I did use Lucky 100 three times and found the highlights were 'trippy'. The images seemed to more resemble the older TRI-X. I couldn't get any 400, so availability was a problem. I am still interested in drowning its big brother, the 400 in some Rodinal. I was very impressed with the 100.

I tried Rollei 400 Retro S, but the processing times are way tooo long in comparison to the three big players. I also processed for the suggested 20minutes at 1:50 and they came out very dark. This time by the way is double that given for the other three, so it doesn't seem a practical alternative. I enjoy processing like the next man, but 20 minutes seems like a stretch of the imagination, especially if you have a whole batch to do. I did read that this film should be developed in Rollei developer to take advantage of its multi-layered technology.

I liked the tonality of the new TMY-2, but found the highlights get hot easily and it is too easy to overdevelop and hence lose these highlights in the process. Also, on the street I found that on a sunny day, if the subject is in the shade and there is a strong lit back ground in the distance, these differences in zones cause that background area to go white too easily without definition retained in these highlights. TRI-X doesn't do this as readily.

This new TMY-2 is also too sharp with a modern leica lens and although the tonality is great, I wouldn't use modern glass with it again. It catches every imperfection. An older uncoated or single coated lens may fair better.

I'm not particulary fond of the new generation of emulsions like Delta and TMAX. For the street where exposure control is more limited than the studio, I think that it also sometimes pays to use the older emulsions as they are more tolerant of exposure/processing errors. Often there isn't enough time to get things right in camera, so you have to compensate in the tank and that is where it pays off using the older emulsions.

I hope these observations help. Not scientific evidence, just souped a lot of film over the last couple of years and have read others accounts as well.

Good luck!
 
coelacanth said:
Tri-X, HP5, LegacyPro400 (Neopan 400), usually pushed to 1600.
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If you had to describe the differences in the look of Tri-x and Neopan pushed to 1600, how would you do so? I'm using Arista Premium (aka tri-x) right now (and almost always push to 1600 or thereabouts, usually in rodinal, sometimes in hc110) but I'm interested in trying Legacypro since...well it's also pretty cheap. And I'd love some insight form another person that shoots and pushes the exact films i'm looking at!
 
The new TMAX 400 (2TMY) remedies the key things that I never liked about the old TMY.
Better tonality, better color sensitivity (it's red-shifted), nicer grain structure.
D76 or (as below) XTOL 1:1.
 
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robinsonphotography said:
If you had to describe the differences in the look of Tri-x and Neopan pushed to 1600, how would you do so? I'm using Arista Premium (aka tri-x) right now (and almost always push to 1600 or thereabouts, usually in rodinal, sometimes in hc110) but I'm interested in trying Legacypro since...well it's also pretty cheap. And I'd love some insight form another person that shoots and pushes the exact films i'm looking at!
Click to expand...
Tri-X seems to have far less punch, less contrast and much more mellow tones when pushed to 1600 than Neopan.
 
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