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Morning all

I'm thinking of trying out some black & white film instead of the usual choice of Velvia. however, I know nothing in regards to this type of film.

With Velvia, the use of grads is a must of you're a landscaper and need to control those highlights in the sky. When it comes to B&W though is it the same story?

Thanks

Jools

Julian,
I personally don't think that filters are so useful for B & W film since it generally has wider latitude & skies can be burned in at the printing stage if you use 'proper' printing. Filters for me are just another thing to remember/decide on so I just have a haze filter and make up the rest as I go along - seems to work for me. Dennis.

I agree. I've used a lot of B&W and never used grads. However, green/yellow/orange filters made specifically for B&W film are very useful for increasing contrast (e.g in skies) or shifting tonal values in conventional film. I find they are less useful with the likes of Ilford XP which also has the advantage of scanning very nicely. I'm sure the same will hold true for similar films from other manufacturers. Hope this helps.

If you're used to using velvia with up to 5 stops of grad then you'll find that on b&w film its within the usual range. In extremes they still might give you an easier to scan neg though.

Thanks for the replies so far. Seems a bit of a mixed bag!

Another dumb question to add into this. Is B&W film like colour. You have the slide ones and the negative ones?

In a few weeks, I'm off to the Lakes as well as into Scotland if I can. If I can get away with it weight wise I wouldn't mind taking up some film instead of doing just digital.

Nah, black&white is all neg film. There used to be a slide film mage by agfa years ago, not sure if it was ever made in large format.

There are ways of processing black&white neg film to give positive transparencies but it sounds like a ballache.

You're absolutely right Dave - but I've never seen it spelt like that!

If I knew I wanted to burn in a sky I think I might use a grad because otherwise you can get a lot more grain which might not be what you want (although it might).

I use grads on neg now and again even though it has even more dynamic range than B&W

Hello Tim,
Ever tried the B&W thing of reducing the dev time (pulling) to bring the highlights in to a manageable area?
Best regards,
Charles

Charles Twist wrote:Hello Tim,
Ever tried the B&W thing of reducing the dev time (pulling) to bring the highlights in to a manageable area?
Best regards,
Charles

Yes but typically it's still grainy because it's the increase in contrast that causes the grain rather than the overall brightness. If you use N-1 or N-2 then you'll have to increase contrast across the whole image.

I am not sure if you refer to contrast modulation as a result of dev or post-processing. N-1 or N-2 reduces the overall contrast of the image by making the highlights less bright, but the shadows and mid-tones are relatively unaffected by pulling (in my experience of B&W). The highlights are brought in to scanner range. So yes, there is still an increase of grain in the highlights, because highlights are highlights after all and post-scanning processing to retrieve detail from this kind of area does increase contrast. But the bulk of the picture dosn't suffer in my experience (unless you don't mask and use the same post-processing all over the image).
Best regards,
Charles

Charles Twist wrote:I am not sure if you refer to contrast modulation as a result of dev or post-processing. N-1 or N-2 reduces the overall contrast of the image by making the highlights less bright, but the shadows and mid-tones are relatively unaffected by pulling (in my experience of B&W). The highlights are brought in to scanner range. So yes, there is still an increase of grain in the highlights, because highlights are highlights after all and post-scanning processing to retrieve detail from this kind of area does increase contrast. But the bulk of the picture dosn't suffer in my experience (unless you don't mask and use the same post-processing all over the image).
Best regards,
Charles

Hi Charles

All of the tones are affected when pulling.. see the sensitometry curves in the following post

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.co ... davis.html

Interesting discussion from my original request!

From the looks of things it seems to be that using a grad on B&W wouldn't hurt at all and in the end is probably more beneficial than trying to faff around in the darkroom. In a way, it's almost like those that foul things up digitally and just try to recover in PS or LR etc.

How about reciprocity failure? Does this come into B&W film? And what ISO 50 films are out there?

Julian Elliott wrote:Interesting discussion from my original request!

From the looks of things it seems to be that using a grad on B&W wouldn't hurt at all and in the end is probably more beneficial than trying to faff around in the darkroom. In a way, it's almost like those that foul things up digitally and just try to recover in PS or LR etc.

How about reciprocity failure? Does this come into B&W film? And what ISO 50 films are out there?

Reciprocity will affect some films

http://home.earthlink.net/~kitathome/Lu ... rocity.htm

Reciprocity also makes pictures more contrasty as it only affects the darker areas of an image and it makes them even darker.

One of the big shockers for me after using Velvia was shooting some FP4+ and realising from the datasheet that the reciprocity failure quoted for ilford film is actually worse than Velvia!