Black and White Musings

Plain Nev

Plain Nev

Vincent Furnier
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Neville
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Sitting here pondering the seemingly interminable time its taking for the lab to develop and scan a couple of black and white films I can't help but wonder why more black and white films don't use C41? I mean I know why, it's historic. But how much easier it would be if the process was automated? It would be so much quicker, and I daresay cheaper too. Particularly when you consider I can very nearly get four films developed for the cost of a single roll of black and white. The companies would probably benefit too from rationalising production. It could be just the thing to catapult film back into the mainstream. So why don't manufacturers produce more black and white films using C41?
 
I don't use C41 films. Conventional films are quicker and easier to process at home, cheaper, and give you more control over the results. Conventional films can be developed for high acutance, or fine grain, or to increase or decrease contrast etc. C41 has none of these options.
 
Plain Nev said:
But how much easier it would be if the process was automated? It would be so much quicker, and I daresay cheaper too.
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Plain Nev said:
The companies would probably benefit too from rationalising production.
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Automated , quicker and cheaper doesn’t always equate to better! ;)

Rationalizing may in some cases prove beneficial to companies , but what about us?

Monochrome film purely in C41 process would bring my togging to a close !
 
john.margetts said:
Because C41 B&W film is nothing like Foma Creative 200, or HP5, or . . .
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Granted. But I'd hazard a guess that future development might go some way to addressing that. We may never know.
 
That's a really narrow tube you're looking down with c41 b/w.
Traditional b/w could be automated, but the number of people calling for that is.......errr........1, impatient yet bone idle Nev geezer..:D
It feels to me like the most pointless film ever created, I'd rather they R&D some slide or conventional B/W than fanny about with a throttled convenience film.
Maybe it was created so bulk processors get all your film to process and not just print film, I dunno.
My thoughts are that its handy for those that want to out source their processing, and that's about the size of it.
You'll be a much happier bunny processing and scanning you're own, and you can throw all you're belts away when you're wallet isn't pulling you're trousers down.

2 birds
1 stone
 
I know that archival properties may not be important to many, but at the end of the day conventional films have a silver image on them, and C41 a dye based one. Properly processed silver should last (caveats apply) whereas dyes are more likely to fade.
 
I’ve just bought 2 x 100foot rolls of Ilford Xp2 Super, slightly expired. I’ll get 36 rolls at about £2.77 per roll. I have developed xp2 at home in C41 in the past, but this time I’m going to develop it in Hc110 - the results I’ve seen look good.
My motivation for the purchase was not to make use of the c41 capability, but simply to get some perfectly good film at a good price.
 
And, just in passing, black and white processing can be automated. The only difference between the E6, C41 and black and white is the lower temperatures and fewer chemicals used in black and white. The are timing differences, yes, but the same applies to the different colour processes. The most recent new entry to auto processing is the Dev.a processor. There are others.
 
I have been developing B&W film for 55 years now. Still mostly the same films, Pan F and FP4 in both 35mm and MF. The experience allows me to make subtle changes to achieve the density and contrast that I want. I have worked through many developers over the years but now mainly mix up my own variations from raw chemicals (when they can be bought without checks to establish that I am not trying to refine drugs).
I have sometimes developed C41 but only colour negative, not a B&W version. It seemed like a lot of trouble for little reward when I could have had a lab do it cheaply and there was no useful input from me.
I also frequently use reversal processing of Pan F to make B&W slides. Is this possible with C41? I have no idea.
I leave my many thousands of negatives to my son in my will - he can recover the silver as his legacy!
If 'proper' B&W film were no longer available I think that it would signal the end of my lifelong hobby and I would simply drown in a sea of megapixels.
 
I really miss Neopan 400. An awesome film. And Neopan 400-CN was quite good too. I burned copious quantities of them back in the day. Still have a bit of it in my freezer.


Neopan 400-CN.jpg

Bull and Rider.jpg
 
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Can't agree with you more. I'm down to the last two rolls in 120. And its image rendering is different, more pleasing to my eye, than XP2. However, XP2 it is now!
 
Plain Nev said:
Sitting here pondering the seemingly interminable time its taking for the lab to develop and scan a couple of black and white films I can't help but wonder why more black and white films don't use C41? I mean I know why, it's historic. But how much easier it would be if the process was automated? It would be so much quicker, and I daresay cheaper too. Particularly when you consider I can very nearly get four films developed for the cost of a single roll of black and white. The companies would probably benefit too from rationalising production. It could be just the thing to catapult film back into the mainstream. So why don't manufacturers produce more black and white films using C41?
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Well, there used to be 3 versions of the C41 black and white: Ilford XP2 (which still exists, bless 'em), Fuji Neopan 400CN and Kodak BW400CN. Both the latter two were discontinued some time ago, presumably because demand was insufficient to justify the costs of production, marketing etc!

I have a couple of rolls of XP2, which I quite like, but I rarely use it, because I don't dev C41. If I knew in advance that I was going to send off some colour C41, I might load a roll of XP2, but in practice it never seems to work quite like that.

In comparison with lab-devved C41, black and white devving is INCREDIBLY cheap... probably under £1 a roll once all the initial costs are ignored!
 
Yes, I think I failed to take into account people's affection for the tactile nature of film development. Anyway, I've got my scans back now. :D
 
StephenM said:
And, just in passing, black and white processing can be automated. The only difference between the E6, C41 and black and white is the lower temperatures and fewer chemicals used in black and white. The are timing differences, yes, but the same applies to the different colour processes. The most recent new entry to auto processing is the Dev.a processor. There are others.
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Why would anyone buy a Jobo now with great innovation like this for only £200 more!
 
The biggest problem with the C41 BW was the labs deved it and printed on colour paper, this used to mean your BW pics had a colour cast 9 times out of 10. I don't know if things have changed these days, haven't shot BW for decades.
As someone said above it's a doddle to dev yourself.
 
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