First, many thanks to all for the collective wisdom and inspiration from the 35mmc community coming out of part 1 of this informal survey of b&w film. Yes, I hope one day to ‘level up’ to doing my own processing, but in the interim at least I’ve settled on a lab I like (Photo Life, in Brooklyn, which offers very competitive prices and turns around consistent results overnight, if not same day.)
Back to the survey, what started as a a friendly chat with Hamish about which black & white stock to buy in bulk before the tariffs kick in has become a bit of a fun jump down a rabbit hole to try out a wide range of the more readily available b&w stocks to learn the qualities, virtues and shortcomings of the different brands & emulsions. Far from settling on a single ‘go to’ film stock, I’ve been enjoying almost all of them! I’m also having fun shooting in a new environment back on the East Coast and being home with my family, including Nico, our Cavalier King Charles.
I have to say I’ve been really impressed with the Rollei stocks on this journey through the photography store’s refrigerators. Rollei Ortho 25 Plus is, to me, a great looking stock with very fine grain and nice contrast and a ‘classic’ feel. With an ISO of 25, it’s definitely not an every day stock, but I really like it when there’s enough light, especially when you can shoot handheld, like the portrait of Nico, as well as this one of a magnolia blossom in our front yard.
This stock would be like a great choice for a bright sunny day, or when you can shoot on sticks, like landscapes or perhaps an outdoor sculpture. I am finding that my new passion for still photography is taking me to places that I’ve never been to before in an ongoing quest for interesting things to shoot, such as the Donald Kendall Sculpture Garden at the Pepsi headquarters in Purchase, NY.
George Segal’s Three People on Four Benches were patient while I swapped out film backs on the Hasselblad to see how different film stocks performed. On a side note, with its modular system of interchangeable film backs, the Hasselblad is a brilliant camera for testing out how different film stocks perform. Swapping from the 6×4.5 back with Ortho 25 to a 6×6 back loaded with Agfa Copex Rapid 50 creates a dramatically different feel with the same subject in identical lighting. The green shades of the lawn and trees are going almost full black and it has generally darker shadows and higher contrast. This stock feels almost as moody as the plaster guy on the bench.
The Agfa Copex Rapid has personality to spare; for me it feels like it’s a bit more expressionistic than many of the more conventional stocks I’ve tried. I definitely think it could be fun to use this for the right project.
The Henry Moore sculpture has a dramatically different look and feel when I switch stocks. On Agfa Copex Rapid, I’m getting a bit of a David Lynch or ‘Alien’ movie vibe, a sense of pulsating menace, like the larger biomorphic mass might devour or absorb the smaller one. Whereas on Delta 400 I’m feeling a sense of calm, a biomorphic mother sheep nuzzling a lamb (which I think was Henry Moore’s intention).
Even the grass feels more relaxed on Delta 400, like I’d have a nice dream if I lay down on the beautiful lawn and fell asleep, in contrast with the darker visions that might come if I fell asleep in an Agfa Copex Rapid world.
I think Delta 400 is very impressive and really like its look for a 400 ISO b&w stock.
I also tried out Rollei RPX 400 at the Kendall Sculpture Garden. I think it’s a good stock and is currently a little less $ than Delta 400 so might be worth a look for a good mix of quality and budget.
There was an intermittent drizzle that day, and I learned that a Hasselblad is not the most user-friendly camera in the rain. Trying to keep everything dry while swapping backs was a chore, but even more problematic was that the waist level finder is prone to taking on water and became more or less unusable as water started to seep into the tiny grooves on the underside of the acute matte focusing screen and making it impossible see through. So that day ended early, but not without getting a few photos for my trouble. Next time I want to shoot on a rainy day, I’ll probably either use the prism finder, or more likely the Leica M3 — if they could survive the jungles of Vietnam they should be able to deal with a little rain in NYC.
On that note, I also tried some street shooting on RPX 400 one afternoon walking down Fifth Avenue in NYC with the M3.
On 35mm I notice the grain a little, but feels like it’s in the same general ‘zip code’ as HP5 and Tri-X.
As I went deeper down the rabbit hole, I began picking up more and more stocks I haven’t tried to expand my search. I like shooting these film stock ‘tests’ on the Hasselblad (on dry days) because the larger 6×6 negative brings out the qualities of the film more clearly, twelve frames is usually enough to get an impression of a stock, and you can try as many interchangeable backs in one location as you are willing to carry in your bag. However, I couldn’t find Kodak TMax 400 on 120 film, so tried a roll on 35mm.
I like the level of contrast and to my eye, it has pretty fine grain for a 400 ISO 35mm film.
For me, admittedly based on a small sample, TMax 400 may have a little less ‘personality’ than some other choices, but It feels like a super solid and reliable stock and capable of very nice results.
Another spot I’ve ‘discovered’ with my cameras is Untermyer Garden, a lovely gem of a public park that was gifted to the City of Yonkers by Samuel Untermyer, a philanthropic lawyer who advocated for corporate reform, regulation of the stock market and other Progressive goals in the early 20th Century. On this evening I wasn’t the only person there taking photos, but probably the only one shooting medium format film, in this case Ilford FP4.
The Walled Garden feels a bit like a ‘folly’ with it’s classical Greek and Persian elements.
I also tried some Rollei Retro 400S.
While I was there, I met a very nice professional photographer who was shooting a young woman celebrating her Quincenaera. He loved that I had a Hasselblad and we compared notes a couple of times and I grabbed a shot or two of them commemorating an important rite of passage with an appropriate amount of fanfare.
A very different, but favorite area to photowalk is Red Hook, Brooklyn and its somewhat decayed industrial waterfront including the Grain Terminal (seen in my prior B&W post from another angle and in another recent “One Shot” story of David Pauley’s). Here I’m shooting it on Rollei 200 Superpan.
A friendly dockworker was interested in the Hasselblad and struck an interesting pose for me.
One of our ‘go to’ family outings is the Rockefeller Preserve, and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a food foundation and high end restaurant on the site of the Rockefeller family’s former dairy farm that supplied their estate nearby. I’ve been taking photos there for a long time and in many different weather conditions. It’s always a lovely outing, seen here on Rollei Superpan 200.
I also tried some Ilford Delta 3200 out at the Rockefeller preserve, which had an interesting slightly faded look. One possible wild card with that particular roll of 3200 is that it went to Canada and back in an airplane, so there might be some light fogging issues with it going through security X-ray machines. (A number of the films in this survey were on the same planes, but I’m under the impression that one doesn’t have to worry as much about films in the more common ISO ranges of 400 and under.)
But I kind of like the mood and look of it. These shots feel almost like something you might see in a 1930’s John Ford movie.
Another film stock I had in the fridge was a roll of Ilford Ortho Plus. Hamish encouraged me to try Ortho, so I loaded some one day when I went out to the Rockefeller Preserve.
I was blown away by the results of that roll and feel like I definitely want to shoot more Ortho Plus. It scores high on so many fronts for me — really nice detail and grain structure, great contrast, and a lot of ‘personality.’
I’ll also credit the environment on that day. The Rockefeller preserve has a lot of personality in the winter months, including some very “Tolkein” looking trees.
This series of shots at Rockefeller on Ortho Plus may be my favorite b&w work since picking up these beautiful vintage cameras.
I’ve been through quite a few b&w stocks, and still have some more to go in Part 3, but I’m really enjoying this survey. A happy benefit of embarking on this small personal quest is a much greater appreciation and interest in shooting in monochrome. I find myself loading B&W more often, even when I’m not trying out a new stock for the survey.
It’s been exciting to see the different qualities of the stocks and also my learning curve from shooting over the last eight or nine months. I look forward to the ongoing conversation with the 35mmc community to see what you think!
The ‘cover image’ for this post, a somewhat murky self-portrait reflected on Arnaldo Pomadoro’s Grande Disco 1 at the Donald Kendall Sculpture Garden, was taken on Ilford Delta 400.
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