Digital BW, The Print

B&W film . . . as pointed out it has a mucher greater tonal range (10+) stops as opposed to colour, and the grain structure IS appealing . . . maybe because many of us grew up with it and lump it in the same category as "mom's apple pie". Colour film, dye based ones at least . . . Kodachrome, and Kodak and Ilford's B&W chromogenics films don't have a grain structure . . . they have what used to be called dye clouds . . . (all other transparency, E6 films, do have a silver grain structure). The dye cloud gives a softer effect than sharp grain. While the chromogenic film from Kodak and Ilford are neat because you can always drop them at a one hour "lab" (which by the way IS becoming an endangered species), they too suffer from a lack of tonal range over a "true" black and white film.

I have always thought that B&W was a truer vision of the real world than colour film gives . . . maybe my head is just screwed on backwards, or upside down ;- ). One of my favourite combos for personal work used to be shooting tech pan in 4x5 . . . a true nightmare. The film is so thin that it literally flaps in the film holder (thus compromising focus), so you were required to load it with another sheet, fogged, and processed, as a backing to allow it to sit in the holder with some rigidity (an awful task to manipulate in the field). Ultimately I gave up smashing my head against a brick wall and started to shoot tech pan in a roll back. Today, I use Fuji Acros and Agfapan 25 (I know they don't make it anymore, but I have a couple hundred rolls in my deep freezer, and no, nobody gets any but me). Everything developed in Rodinal, a developer that gives an acute grain . . . which photoshop can come close to, but it just ain't the same thing. As to the time taken for developing film . . . do it in the right mood and it becomes an almost Zen-like affair, restful, calm . . . and a pleasant diversion from being glued to a CRT. Good exercise for the wrist also.

all the best
Paul Aparycki


  There are a couple of reasons I use B&W film, and do not convert from color,
  much less shoot B&W with a Bayer pattern sensor.  One is, the
  "characteristic" grain/look of the particular film.  I like Tri-X a *real*
  LOT, I also LIKE Plus-X a real lot.  I could possibly, at least digitally,
  create something *like* the look/characteristic of these films, but why?
  It's time I don't have to spend if I simply shoot with my film of choice in
  the first place.

  The other reason is tonality.  The B&W films have different (IMO better)
  tonal response.  They allow me to get near 10 stops (or more) of scene
  density on the film, with the tonal separation in the areas I want, with
  little to no effort...and I can control the development to give me the
  results I want.  With color film, this is either not really possible (as you
  get color shifts that you might not want), or at least, it's more work.

  Regards,

  Austin

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