I've played with pretty much any film I come across, and in terms of cost-benefit I've settled on Fomapan films. I like the grain structure, they are some of the cheapest BW film available and have great latitude if you like to mess with stand development. I shot this photo on a Pentax ME camera using Fomapan 100. Developed at home with Ilfotec DDX and scanned with a Canon 5D Mk3 + Canon 100mm f2.8.
Definitely depends on my mood, but my go-to's are HP5 and Fomapan 100 because I stocked up on bulk rolls and I'm still working through it. I've also got a little stash of Agfa Cinerex IC1N that I like to shoot with, it's a little slower, but it tends to be quite contrasty without the need for orange/red filters or pusing. This is an older shot from when I was messing around with it, I think from my very first roll.
I've also settled on Fomapan. I mostly tend to use 200 or 400, but I've also found that pushing the 400 to 1600 to do some night time city shooting is a really fun time.
I've tried quite a few (tend to dev mostly with Pyrocat HD), and still keep coming back to TMY-2 @250. Part of this is b/c its available on 35mm/120/4x5
Ilford FP4, mostly. I shoot virtually exclusively large format, occasionally medium format, but pretty much always from a tripod, and like longer exposures and / or wide open apertures, so have no need for a faster film.
I quite like Fomapan 100, but it fails because of extreme reciprocity on long exposures.
I would love to shoot Fuji Acros again, that was the perfect film for me. But Fuji.
The prices for Kodak in 4x5 are absurd, bad enough I have to put up with those for color.
FP4 is beautiful, I shoot Fomapan for price, but FPR is amazing. I don't shoot a lot of very long exposures so didn't know about those issues with Fomapan, a shame. So what you're saying is, it is not consistent with long exposures? Like, several long exposures that are exactly the same result in different film reactions?
I’ve gone through a couple go to films over the last couple years:
Rollei Retro 80S - bought a bulk roll of this when I first stated shooting. Works great with Rodinal and the grain is very nice. Main problem is the obviously slow speed, and it’s very contrasty.
Kentmere 400 - another one I bulk rolled for a while. Decent results, and I was tempted to switch to it again recently for budget reasons, but I noticed that I tended to have a lot more great shots with Tri-X, even though I shot a lot more Kentmere. Generally I found it was pretty low contrast. The emulsion apparently doesn’t have as much silver content as non-budget Harmon emulsions (ie. HP5+), so I wonder if that’s a factor in why I didn’t like it as much as Tri-X.
Kodak Tri-X - my pre-pandemic standard after giving up on bulk rolls. I would love to continue using it, but the new pricing is just too high.
These days I’m starting to standardize on Ilford HP5+. I’ve only shot a few rolls so far, but it seems comparable to Tri-X.
Kentmere is great for price, agreed on the low contrast but I was ok with that, easy to fix in post and sometimes I liked the "neutral" look of the shots, however I was getting very dirty scratched negatives from it. Clearly that is my fault, but I thought I was being careful with them and it doesn't happen to me with other films so I've switched to Fomapan.
I've been using a bunch of Kodak 5222 ("Double-X"). I got a bulk roll of it a few years ago, like 130ft for $20. Slightly expired but still pushes great to 400 or shot normally around 200.
Higher sensitivity and I'll go for HP5, but that is getting less common for me nowadays.
HP5+ Is definitely my go-to. I usually push it 1-2 stops as well.
I've also been trying Kentmere 400, but I've been having trouble developing it at home. Idk if the massive dev chart is just wrong, but the times I've used from there have cooked my rolls a little too much.
Interesting, I've used the dev chart to develop K400 and I thought they were fine, what developer are you using? Although, maybe they are getting overdeveloped and I just don't see it.
HP5 has been my go-to for a while. I have a friend who recently shot a roll of Dracula 64, an infrared sensitive film, and I'm excited to see how that turns out.
I've seen IR film for sale a few times but always worried to try it as it's not cheap and I figure I'm just going to waste it. Ask your friend to post some of those here, would be really interesting to see.
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