b&w photo processing

[pnkbabu]

hi can one of you guys answer a question that i have...when you are doing your own developing .....can you use and kind of black and white film....like picted up at your local photostore...i heard it was best to start developing with conventional b&w film for starters...but what kind is that...this may be a dumb question but i am stumped and i dont want to ruin any film

 

[Mr.ReDEyE]

go with Ilford black and white film.....either slower less-grainy film like Ilford FP4 125.....or faster grainier film like Ilford HP5 400......its good stuff....

 

[markc]

There are B&W films that use color processing. You can tell these by looking for C41 on the box. You need color chemicals to do those.

Each of the conventional B&W films has it's prefered chemicals and times, but there is a lot of cross over between them. I'll leave the details to one of the darkroom gurus here, as I haven't touched it in a long time.

 

[ksmattfish]

go with Ilford black and white film.....either slower less-grainy film like Ilford FP4 125.....or faster grainier film like Ilford HP5 400......its good stuff....

I agree that these would be good choices to start with. As Mark said, just avoid the C41 BW if you are developing your own (there will be warnings on the film/box).

 

[oriecat]

Yes, what they all said! I just started using Ilford HP5+ 400 last year and I really like it, just got a 100' roll to start bulk loading! Try it out, then pop over to the Darkroom forum and join us! We need more darkroomies.

Other really common films would be Kodak T-Max 100 or 400 or Kodak Tri-x.