Just wondering what combination of film and developer people prefer.
Any thoughts?
To be perfectly honest, I don't think I'm a skilled enough photographer, developer, printer, or scanner to really exploit the differences between various films and developers. Unless there is tight control over these myriad variables, it's very difficult to attribute the look of any of these combinations to the films and developers themselves and not to something else that's been done along the way (e.g., exposure, light, scanning skills, etc.).
I've mostly only used Ilford Ilfotech LC29 (save for a bit of DD-X for faster films and for pushing) and I'd say that the only times it hasn't yielded good results with any film is probably when
I have made mistakes or didn't know what I was doing.
I've used LC29 with Acros 100:
T-Max 400:
HP5:
The biggest differences that I see between these photographs doesn't relate directly to the inherent characteristics of the films or developers themselves, but instead to the situations in which I choose to use these films or developers (e.g., I tend to use HP5 when there's less or flat light; T-Max 400 when it's later in the afternoon, but still sunny; and Acros mid-day in the bright sun). The fact that I've scanned all of these myself, however, could have reduced any differences that exist on the film negatives themselves.
To be clear, I'm not saying that there aren't differences between these films and the various developers, there will be, but I'm simply not a good enough black and white photographer to understand and make use of those differences at the moment.
So for consistency, my favourite film award goes to Ilford XP2 Super, which of course is developed in C41 chemicals with a standardised regime for time and temperature. I've never had a badly-developed roll of XP2 (mine have all been done with the Rollei Digibase C41 chemicals, but I don't think that matters).
For guaranteed consistency and amazing versatility, I agree that C41 monochrome films are the way to go. I've mostly been using Fuji 400CN, which is very similar to XP2 (it's even made by Ilford as well), but it's 50p cheaper at Calumet down the street. I can shoot from ISO 50–400 on the same roll without a problem and development is standardised, because I'm now taken out of the equation.
At any rate, for as much reading and agonising one might do regarding film choice and development, I still think that the human element is the most important factor in the final output.
robot-gothic1 by Marvin d martian100, on Flickr
