film preference?

It is very hard to choose "one" favorite film. For B&W I think it's hard to beat Tri-X, but also Ilford's XP2 is a greatly convenient film when you know you're just not going to get around developing your own B&W in the near future (I've got five rolls of Tri-X and two Plus-X sitting around for the past month). It's a tie between Ilford FP4+ and Kodak Plus-X. Agfa is great, but I just can't help the lure of Tri-X.

For color, Fuji film is pretty hard to beat when you consider performance vs. cost. Agfa's XPS films are great but when used with the light it's meant for (i.e. XPS for daylight is absolutely unbeatable compared to Fuji NPS).
 
I use the same film for Russian, German & Japanese lenses/cameras, and that is Fuji B&W - all the Neopans - 100, 400, 1600. Nice & punchy when developed in XTOL.

 
HP5+ @ 320. 7min in Ilfosol-S. Then onto Ilford Multigrade IV FB in Ilford Multigrade developer. Thats pretty much all I do (cause I'm lazy)
 
CVBLZ4 said:
I won't be processing any at home in the near future, but there is a couple of pretty good camera shop processing labs near by so I'm pretty sure about any film thrown out here could be handled.
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Dear CVBLZ4,
As a man that has run a commercial hight quality b&w lab for a decade in the city of Jerusalem, which is short of local high paying photographers, but plenty of the many foreign pros comming here, I am inclined to think you are deadly wrong.

The films mentioned in this thread are under the label of "classical films". They were designed for manual processing. Manual processing is very much like cooking. There are very few labs in the world cooking the different classical films at their best, and in exchange of very high fees. Imagine for a moment you are the lab technician. You have got 5 films Tri-x, one of them pushed, 4 HP5, 1 Tmax and 2 Neopans. Do you have the commercial time and personal patience to develope each brand separately ? If you do, you will have to charge extreme high fees from your customers and most of the chances are that you will be left with very few of them.
If you don't, then you will have to prepare an average soup with less than acceptable results. This way will render unconsistent results from time to time you bring your films there. Afterwards you will be thinking the film is bad, or your exposure is bad, or what the hell is going on, and go crazy. Or back to color.

Going back to your main question, the issue is not which are the best films but your ability to manually develop one brand and knowing it in depht. When you reach this point your negs will start to sing. Classical films = classical treatment. No shortcut.

Otherwise, use Ilford XP2.

Kind Regards,
Ruben
 
Ruben,
I am sure your experience has borne your statements to be true. I haven't developed film in over 20 years but may soon return to it. As to cost, would it be practical to offer customers a choice of a standard development, say Tmax, or a speciality developer at a higher price. In the US I just sent my film to a lab, I'll let everyone know later, two different Ilford films. They asked if I wish to chose the developer or let them decide on which one for which film. One was HP5 and the other SFX. This option provides me with the choices to use which film I want and how I want it.
 
Well for me i have tried Tmax 400, HP5 and TriX in my about 2 years of self developing.

For me didn;t have much luck with Tmax series of films though (can;t seem to get the results i want), but when i tried Tri-X with Rodinal (12mins @ 22C), the negatives were much better probably will try more with it (pushing to 1600!!), haha as u can see many people do vouch for Tri-X.

XP2 is good C-41 film. For slides i usually use Provia 400.
 
HI RICHARD,
I do think you may find good lab manual technicians in the US. If so I advise the following:
a) Try to know exactly who is the guy processing your film. If there are several you are adviced to follow just one of them in order to achieve consistency from film to film.
b) Try to meet this guy by any excuse and prize his work. In a good manual processing there are a lot of small details which should be taken care for each time, with the same carefull proceeding. If your guy is doing a fine job each time, for you it is a mine gold.

HI SLJM,
Tri-x and Ilford HP5 have been and still are the most beloved classical films because they are built with the widest tolerances for error. Not the case with Tmax, which is in fact a studio indoors only film, no matter Kodak sales policies. Most of the problems with Tmax film aren't processing but exposure when making the pics with your camera. For outdoors it is at its best at cloded/rainy days, when exposure is easy. But go with Tmax outdoors in a sunny day and afterwards you get mad with the results. The reason is that the scale of f/stops acceptable in Tmax film are around 5, while in Tri X or Hp5 they are around 8.

BTW Kodak's announced times for processing are very far from reality. Ilford times for Kodak's films are accurate indeed.

Kind Regards,
Ruben
 
Ruben ~ thanks for your input. No doubt your experience of a decade in a commercial high quality b&w lab gives sure credibility to your views of these classical films. Such experience and views are one of the reasons I hang out here and ask questions.

Though I’m not interested in doing so at this juncture in my hobby, I did some “cooking,” as you call it, as a younger man, back before these classics were classics, so I do to some meager extent understand the process. At that time I pretty much stuck with Kodak films as they were readily available in the small town where I lived. I posed this thread to get views on those and other “non-Kodak” films to try.

Your statement that “There are very few labs in the world cooking the different classical films at their best…” is something of a broad generalizing assumption, but I understand your point. It’s a moot point to me however since (a) I don't need a global network of labs - I only need ONE that's reasonably close to home and (b) they don’t have to be “the best cooks” since my pics are usually poo-poo anyway. I’m not a hung-up perfectionist. (c’mon, I’m shootin’ Zorkis here) I’m just an old guy having fun.

But thanks to your post, I did double-check to be sure I do have that "one lab" that could process at least some of the films mentioned here. I called the local (15 minutes from my house) camera store I occasionally visit that has had a commercial high quality b&w and color lab for over four decades where I had inquired about films and the lab’s processing capabilities before I offered this thread and made the statement you quoted above. I read him the list of the five films you mentioned and a few others of interest and he assured me, “They’d be no problem.”

I guess it turns out that, though well-intended, your “inclination to think that I am deadly wrong” …… is wrong…… but thanks for sending me to be sure before I actually purchased and shot film. Had I walked into the lab with great anticipation only to find out “we don’t do that here,” that would have spoiled my old-guy-having-fun afternoon.
 
Following a suggestion that Rbeimer posted about "these guys" to process his black and whites, I sent a roll of Delta 400 and SFX to them for developing and printing contact sheets. I received them today and am pleased. They didn't specify which developer they used on which film but the SFX was much better than the lab I had been using. I can see a big difference in the details. I haven't been able to scan them yet. I like the contact sheets and there appears to be the full gray scale throughout. Check Rbeimer's posting on the first page and you'll see which lab he is talking about. I can't wait to load the Pentacon 6tl with the SFX and put on the Flektogon 50 with the red filter to see how they do with that.
 
Until now i've been using mostly a Lomo LC-A with FUJI SUPERIA, 200 and 400 ISO and I'm happy with that film. It give good color saturation.
Recently I've been using some cheap no-name 200 iso print film sold in bags of 5 at my grocery store...it's good enough for my Lomo.
For cross-processing I've used Elitechrome 100 ISO and so far it's come out good. But slide films are extraordinarily expensive in Iceland so i won't be using slide films much.

I just bought a C41 B&W film for my new Zorki-4...it's called Kodak 400+....I don't know if it's the same as 400CN many have recommended?
Here in Reykjavik there is a very limitied supply of films and hard to find lower ISO than 200 and very hard to find other brand than Kodak and Fuji.
 
Hlynur, how about buying it by mail order? There are some shops in the UK that send anywhere and are low price.
 
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