Kodak BW400CN

p.giannakis

Pan Giannakis
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Hi all,

I am thinking of developing BW400CN on ID-11 1:4. Any ideas about the developing time / temperature/ stop bath etc..?

Any advice is more than welcome.
 
One word: DON'T.

This is C-41 film, it is not designed to process in BW developers. Doing so eliminates all the reasons you would choose that film: Overexposure lattitude, fine grain, easy scanning and use of Digital ICE/IR cleaning, easy lab processing. All these benefits come from the fact that BW400CN is a color neg film with only one color: grey. The final image is made of dyes, not silver grains. If you process in ID-11, you get silver grains that were not designed to be left in the emulsion (C-41 process removes them to leave only the dye) so it will look ugly.


If you want to use ID-11, buy some Tri-X.
 
HP5Plus is Ilford's traditional style 400ISO if you wish to stick with them.

BW400CN is a nice film for what it is - a C41 film that you can take to your local one hour place for dunking & scanning. If you have some special reason for wanting to treat it as traditional film, I'd suggest Diafine instead as it will do the job without having to worry about developement times & temperatures. Diafine will also get you back most of the speed & latitude you would lose using D76/ID11.

William
 
Boy! that would have been a big fail...:eek:
Thank you very much for your input guys, i was about to develop it using the ID-11.

Regards,
Pan
 
Some examples of BW400 in different developers. I already had the film and thought "what the heck - why not see what happens."

BW400 (EI 250) developed in rodinal (1:100 stand)

4344212263_fb6bfa1839.jpg


Contax G2, 45/2 Planar

BW400 (EI 250) developed in HC-110 (dilution h + dash of rodinal semi-stand)

4571231604_91b6fe9752.jpg


ZI, 50/2 Planar

And finally, BW400 (EI 250) developed in C41 at home.

4782789049_490d06f477.jpg


OM-1n, 50/1.2
 
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