C41 B&W

[nikonbob]

I hope I am in the right place to post this. I have been using C41 B&W film with satisfaction and have tried conventional B&W film. I am just too lazy to buy bulk and develope at home, I guess.

Bob Hammond

[PeterW]

For C41 black and white those two have the best tonal range from dead black to pure white I think I've seen from a chromogenic film. Too often it comes out with a brown or purple tint.

The first one reminds me of the lonely church where - was it Clint Eastwood? - was posing as a minister and had to beat a hasty retreat.

I like the placing of the main building to one side of the frame, and the way it stands out against the dark foreground and the sky. Bet it wouldn't be nearly so attention grabbing in colour!

I also like the low angle of the car shot which emphaises its lines. What is it, a straight eight of some sort? Surely not a Hudson is it?

PeterW

[nikonbob]

Thanks for commenting PeterW. That was one of the reasons for posting them was to show the tonal range that you can get out of C41 B&W. It gets it's bad rap from the output of most lab prints I have seen. This was scanned as a colour neg, then auto colour and contrast in PS 2.0 with some sharpening and then converted to greyscale. The film was consummer Kodak C41 B&W with yellow filter shot at 100asa. It prints out well on an Hp 7960 with their grey cartridge. Needless to say I really like this film and think it dose not deserve the bad rep it has. As for the car, I think it may have been an Auburn. Yeah it has lines to fall in love with. You never know, maybe Clint made it to rural Saskatchewan.

Bob Hammond

[kiev4a]

Nice tone range on the shots.

Another nice thing about C41 negs is you can make use of dust and scratch removal options in programs like ICE. You can't use that feature on true B&W negs because of the silver emulsion. You have to remove flaws manually.

[Microdad]

I had bad luck with the C41 when I tried it but can attribute that to our local lab. These shots are so impressive I believe I'll give it another go.

Steve

[nikonbob]

Steve

The C41 film that I use is the Kodak consumer version which is easily available locally and usually cheaper than XP2, but YMMV. I get the film developed with CD and no prints. The CD is only to see which ones I may like to scan at home on my Minolta 5400 first version film scanner. There seems to be nothing wrong with most labs developing that I have tried but very few seem to be able to print it properly. Let me know how you make out if you try it again.

Bob Hammond

[kiev4a]

Bob:

Whats the speed on the film? I've never paid attention. I've never used it but may have to give it a shot.

[nikonbob]

Wayne

The film is 400 but alot of people seem to shoot it at 200. I shoot it at 200 and with a yellow filter at 100 using an incident meter. Cameras with a TTL metering system should compensate for the yellow filter. The film is very flexable and you could try shooting the same scene at various asa settings to see which give you the results that you like. Both Kodak and Ilford have tech pdfs on their web sites on their C41 B&W films. Again if you try it let me know what the results were like.

Bpb Hammond

[heath]

I have only ever used C-41 B&W film (except for one roll of out of date T-Max 100) for my B&W shots, both in 35mm and 120. I have used Kodak B&W 400 (consumer), BW400CN, the old T400CN (both pro emulsions), Ilford XP2 Super and Konica C-41 B&W with equal success. The only problems I have had were operator errors when metering with an incidence meter that i thought was accurate but wasn't. In 120 thses film are beautiful.

Heath