Film Comparison

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I understand that film preferences are subjective, but I am looking for any site that may provide black and white film comaprisons. Personal experiences and preferences are welcome! Thank you.

-- Fiona Hersey (fairlight1@aol.com), October 11, 1999

Answers

I like the Ilford Delta films (developed in PMK) for my medium format photography, but you are going to get as many different answers as there are photographers who respond.

I don't think there is a site that will give you the comparisons you are looking for. Anyway, it all depends on how you shoot, what ISO you expose at, what you develop in, what paper you print on, what paper developer you use, what toner you tone in, etc., ad infinitum. These variables make any film comparisons or subjective choices pretty meaningless.

http://www.ravenvision.com/rvapeter.htm

-- Peter Hughes (leonine@redshift.com), October 11, 1999.


Practical Photography, a UK mag, October 1999, compares 20 B&W films. It's pretty superficial, only one developer per film, but you do get a 36x blow-up so you can get some idea of sharpness/grain/contrast of each film. It's only four pages, so there's not enough space to discuss important factors such as how the film reacts to different developments, or subject contrast ranges, or ...

Just browse through this forum, and you will probably see more favourite film/dev combinations than there are contributors. If you want focused answers, it might help if you could describe what sort of photography you want it for, and the format.

Have you tried the photography section of a good book shop?

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), October 11, 1999.


Try http://www.phototechmag.com/buying_b-w.htm

-- Christopher Hargens (ldmr@cruzio.com), October 12, 1999.

The german magazin "Profifoto" provides a comparison table:

http://www.profifoto.de/artikel/filmtest3.html

It's german but should be readable...

-- Guido Bittner (gbittner@vorsicht.de), October 14, 1999.


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