Old newbie: B&W questions

[rloeb]

Hi. I was a news photographer back in the 60's, before anyone ever heard of a photojournalist. Started with a Nikon SP, acquired a Nikon F, later sold SP to buy lens for F (bad move!), had a Leica for a bit. Eventually discovered that I could both eat and buy lenses if I went into computer biz. It's been good to me. Got back into pix big time with arrival of digital. Now have way more stuff than I can carry (2-D2X, D2H, pretty much every lens from 10.5 to 600, fully equipped studio, Epson 4800, multiprocess PC with Cintiq 21" tablet/monitor, ...) BUT I MISS RANGEFINDER and B&W!!!

So, I broke down and ordered an R3a w/40mm Noktor f/1.4 from Mr. Gandy. (Managed to resist offering him my black Nikon F with serial 64xxxxx in trade.) And now I'm confronted with the film question. I'll shoot a few rolls of Fuji Provia, just for fun, but I want my B&W. Then what? I have my old Nikor stainless steel tanks and a changing bag, but I'd prefer to let someone else do the chemistry for now. Plan is to scan the negs with a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000, monkey with them in Photoshop, then print them with Quadtone RIP through the 4800 onto Museo Silver Rag (so I don't have to switch to matte black ink). Later, of course, I'll want to soup my own. (Do miss the smell of hypo on my hands...) Then I'll be willing to switch over the printer to matte black. Heck, maybe I'll fire up the Beseler and make "real" photos.

So, help an old guy out -- what film and who processes it? I notice there's some B&W slide film available at B&H, but would seem to sort of defeat the purpose. Anyone make a B&W film that processes in C41? Then I could use C41 mailers.

Suggestions more than welcomed, plus "lessons learned."

Thanks for allowing me to play here!

Rog
www.pbase.com/rloeb

 

[Dr E]

I've just started film photography since changing from digital and I've shot a few roles of Ilford XP2. It uses the C41 chemistry so any high street lab should process it.

 

[sunsworth]

If you want to use C41 film then try Ilford XP2 - don't expect great prints from the minilab, they will have a strong green or sepia colour cast.

If you want to use traditional silver b&w films I can recommend Ilford FP4 (ISO 125), Kodak Tri-X (ISO 400) and Fuji Neopan 1600 (ISO 1600, suprise, suprise 🙂

 

[ray_g]

Anyone make a B&W film that processes in C41? Then I could use C41 mailers.

www.pbase.com/rloeb

Welcome! Kodak TCN400 or Ilford XP2 are both c41. When I use these, I just take them to the local Walgreen's or any place with a Fuji Frontier, and have them process only, no prints. That's about a couple of bucks for a roll of 36. If there is any color tint, that's easily fixable in PS. Since you plan to scan and print your own, this is the way I'd go.

 

[rloeb]

WOW! What a great group. Instant replies.

I like the Ilford recommendation a lot, but I hadn't thought about dropping it off at my local Wolf Camera, which has a Fuji Frontier. All the prepaid mailers were going to get me a bunch of lousy prints I didn't want.

Much appreciate the advice! This is gonna be fun.

Rog

 

[Dr E]

I forgot to add don't get prints done.

I have a few done at Boots and each one has a green tint to them

Hopefully Santa will bring me a film Scanner for christmas.

 

[GeneW]

Rog, when you take your first couple of rolls of C-41 B&W, vary the exposure a bit to see what you like. A lot of photogs prefer these films (iso400) shot at 200.

Gene

 

[photographyrich]

Another film re-discoverer here. I'd go along with the above advice and recomend you don't have prints made when you get negatives developed. Mine have come out horrid. Once scanned the negatives have proven to be fine.

Better yet develop your own. I forgot how quick and easy it is to develop B/W negs and the Ilford chemicals are nearly odorless.

Haven't been impressed with XP2. It seems to scan funky in my unit - grain when there should'nt be any. I absolutely love Neopan 1600. Had good luck with Ilford FP4 and marginal luck with Delta 400 (too grainy again, although Ilfosol S developer was to blame I've determined).

Nice pictures of Tracy Arm in AK. We went this summer and it was one of the neatest places I've ever been.

Feel free to ask more if I can be of help!

Rich

 

[gareth]

XP2 is great stuff if you are going to print in the darkroom, that is if you can get a somebody to process it without scratching it.

But if you are going to scan it, (and the scratches ain't a problem if you have a scanner with ICE) I 'd suggest you shoot colour neg. XP2 is basically a colour technology film, well without the multi-layer colour stuff. Then you can choose whether you want colour or b&w, plus you also have the option of using the channel mixer to convert it.

The traditional silver films have a different look from XP2. If you want that look, don't be put off by the processing. You've done it before, it's easy. You might want to buy a new reel to evaluate it against your old ones. The modern nylon ones I find are a breeze to load compared to the old plastic ones from the 50's my old man gave me.

As for scanning traditional film, you'll have to seek the advice of others here. Again I print mine in the darkroom, then flat bed scan it for web/e-mail. I've tried scanning b&w film in my Nikon Coolscan 4, while XP2 scans fine, I find the traditional stuff a pig to scan. But I do know people do it, and get good results that way.

 

[Trius]

I have had varying results from C41 b&w. As Gene says, bracket your exposures to find the ISO that works best for you. Another part of the equation, I think is that scanning can vary. Not having my own scanner, I think sub-par scans, combined with somewhat "off" exposure, have been discouraging for me.

I know you don't want to mess with chemistry and processing, but for a medium to high speed b&w film, I have recently returned to Tri-x after fiddling with the C41s and some other conventional b&w emulsions. The look of traditional b&w materials, especially the standard (non t-grain etc.) formulations, cannot be matched, IMO.

Currently I am processing my Tri-x and remaining Agfa APX100 in Rodinal and just love the look of the negs. Scanning to follow.

Oh ... welcome!

 

[gareth]

Currently I am processing my Tri-x and remaining Agfa APX100 in Rodinal and just love the look of the negs. Scanning to follow.

XP2 can work great, but I love tri-x in rodinal. It's a great combo for character, though it is grainy, but then it holds shadow detail like nothing else and doesn't often blow the highlights. Rodinal is dirt cheap too, and it keeps almost forever.

I did a one day docu shoot recently for one of my clients. I shot half colour, half b&w.
When she looked at the b&w prints she was blown away. She told me that I shoot instant history. It was tri-x in rodinal. Love it.

 

[ARCHIVIST]

Rog,
Iford XP2 has been mentioned a lot and it is the way to go for C41 b/w.
You should get good nuetral b/w prints from a Frontier machine as it has a program for the C41 b/w emulsions.
XP2 is also a B/W SLIDE FILM - rate it between 80 and 125 ISO and push process it 2 stops in E6 chemistry and you will get a monochrome tranny! I use the word 'monochrome' as the trannies will have a greenish tone to them as the film emulsion reacts with the formaldehyde in the E6 chemistry.
Some labs will claim the residue from the XP2 will contaminate their E6 chem. but this is not so.
Have fun!
Regards
ARCHIVIST

PS I worked for Ilford Australia for just over 10 years.

 

[rloeb]

Wow. A wealth of info! I wasn't planning to have the lab print at all. Just run the negs and I'll feed them to the scanner (which does have ICE). I realize that if I'm really going to do this, I'll end up souping them myself. Heck, I've got all the equipment, including a fancy film washer and a film dryer. I must've put 5,000 rolls through one soup or another, mostly D-76, and I suspect I can wind an old Nikor reel pretty smoothly. But I will look at the current stuff when I get that far.

And, I like the advice about just using color neg film. Why not. A lot of my stuff will be shot under flourescent or incandesent lighting, but that shouldn't make any difference if I'm going to channel mix later for B&W.

Thank you all for sharing your wisdom and hard won expertise. I'm looking forward to reading that first roll...

It was the announcement of the Leica M8 that started my down this road. If the results are at all like I remember them, I'll be dumping some Nikon glass to finance an M8 and some wide, wide Leica glass. (I always thought that a 35mm was a "normal" lens.)

Rog

-- I'd be attempting to recapture my youth, but I can't remember it.

 

[rloeb]

Further, perhaps silly, question: If I'm going to shoot color anyway, and then scan the negs, why not just shoot slide film? Much easier to sort out the junk. Does color negative film provide that much more dynamic range or lower grain?

Rog

 

[bigdog]

I will just cut and paste from my post of a few weeks ago asking for film info...

If you want black and white shoot the real stuff in my opinion. I only like the C-41 films for certain subjects like portrait work because it appears to give creamy/smooth skin tones. The grain is what makes black and white film so beautiful in my opinion and I don't think you can get that with desaturted color films. I scan on a Minolta Scan Elite 5400 and print on an Epson R2400 and I love the B & W results.

Get your film processed at www.mylab.com and tell them Brian from Maine sent you! They have never scratched or lost a negative, can handle any B & W film and have been doing so for over twenty years.

A good article here on paper choices and more by Clayton Jones http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm

I try to use the slowest film speed to get the image I want considering subject and conditions.

Adox/Ekfe 25 rated @ ISO 25 when shooting with tripod (high contrast film...beautiful film....scans really well with no adjustments after scan most of the time)

AGFA APX 100 @ 80 when light allows. (classic look...great tonality...bought a bunch to stock freezer)

Tri-X @ 250 for all around film (seems to always give me great results regardless of conditions and beautiful grain)

TMAX 3200 @ 1600 not good for indoor stage or arena lighting in my experience but beautiful results under low light and some nice grain for landscape shots with a great look I can only get on this film....scans well

Reala 100 @ 80 (low contrast but beautiful accurate colors... film great for shooting on a bright day under high contrast lighting...scans well and contrast can easily be bumped up in photoshop)

Fuji 400 X-tra @ 400 (high contrast...harder to scan and color correct in my experience but can yeild some wonderful results and inexpensive)

Kodak 400 UC @ 400 is my preference for color 400 speed film but I dont shoot all the time because it is expensive! Scans well.

Kodak 400 HIE @ 400 is a really cool infra-red film when shot with #25 red filter.... it turns foliage white and skies and water black with white clouds....very grainy and won't enlarge much but beautiful grain...very very expensive!

 

[willie_901]

Rog,

Welcome to RFF.


I recently started to develop my own B&W. I bought a 100 ft. roll of TriX and bulk load (just like I did in 1971). I develop B&W myself with D-76.

I scan my home-developed B&W negatives. I scan these as 16 bit 1200 ppi images (21 MB files). The software I use automatically frames the picture. I automatically scan 30 exposures in less than 35 minutes. This type of scan works well for proofs and digital display. I manually re-scan the negatives I want for prints. I create 16 bit 4800 ppi scans (144 MB files). These stand up to Photoshop correction very well.

I recommend scanning B&W as color and then convert the color image to monochrome (but stay in the color space of your choice). You get more data in the scan and commercial photo lab printers handle this type of jpeg much better because the printer software just uses the color-space of the digital file and all is well. I use a couple of different free Photoshop plug-ins to do the monochrome conversion. Recently I've been using Adobe LightRoom software to do this.

I have never used the C-41 B&W films. I felt that TriX and developing my own negatives gives me more flexibility. I can push TriX but have not found a local lab that will push C-41. If I want to shoot fine grain B&W there is no C-41 alternative (I think commonly available C-41 B&W is all ISO 400).


I have scanned 35mm transparencies. I did not get them mounted. Instead they were scanned to CD. I do not think this is worth the the added cost. It takes my lab 2-3 days to develop transparency film. As you know, exposure is much more critical for transparencies. I have not been very pleased with results. However i have seen lovely prints from scanned transparencies. I'm sure I would eventually get the hang of it. But it just seems too expensive to mess with because color negatives also produce lovely scanned images (if they are not underexposed!!). I have had better results scanning my old 35mm slides from 1970-1978.

Of course you can get beautiful saturated, balanced color from your digital cameras.


I decided that printing at home was uneconomical. The retail ink costs are just silly. I upload jpegs (300 to 500 ppi) to my local camera store's web site. Two days later I pick up the prints. They do a great job. I have never received a B&W print with a color cast. There are dozens of on-line services that make consumer quality prints from digital files you upload. There are are also numerous on-line pro-labs that make gallery quality color and B&W prints.

Have fun,

willie

 

[gareth]

Further, perhaps silly, question: If I'm going to shoot color anyway, and then scan the negs, why not just shoot slide film? Much easier to sort out the junk. Does color negative film provide that much more dynamic range or lower grain?

A lot of people do that and get nice results, but also I tend to think it looks a bit like digtial capture b&w. Slide film has much less dynamic range. Negative film has loads of dynamic range.

Maybe shoot a few rolls of colour neg (always go for a wee bit of overexposure, avoid underexposure). Then play around converting the ones you want b&w. If the b&w bug hits you, then maybe try some traditional film.

Oh and for getting back into traditional film I'd suggest you try a 400asa film. I find them much more tollerant than the slower or faster films. I'll rate anywhere from 200 to 800asa (I switch to Delta 3200 if I need more speed). You have the gear, and you've processed loads of film in the past, it'll come back quick.