400 iso B/W film shoot out. 2017. TMax, Tri X, HP5, Foma
 

Got a spare hour during lockdown! What better way to confirm/smash-to-pieces one's prejudices than a good, old fashioned American shoot-out. Bound to stir controversy; even grouchiness. Forgive me if some have already seen this and have already commented. Yet, gotta hand it to this guy, he's thorough to a T(grain) :D. He subjects 13 films to exhaustive in-studio tests for tonality/contrast, grain, shadow detail, and edge sharpness which he calls halation (which I thought was something else). Innate subjectivity creeps in to many of these tests of eye/brain response. My interest lay in the intrinsic image structure of each film and an alternative to advertiser/dealer copywriting which usually says every film is darn good. He chooses HC-110 as his standard dev. However, spoiler alert: Bottom two films out of 13 tested- Berger Pancro & T-Max at 54 points. Top two - HP5 score 68 and Kentmere score 67. Don't forget that well-used adage about beauty being hidden in someone's eye.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG02lCyAuqg

Thanks for the link Rick. Once I started watching I realised I had watched this before but given its length it repays a second viewing. I found that there were some film that I could eliminate almost immediately as he was showing them but not that many.

So what I did was to look at the full set of each photo then watch each shot within each photo 1-4 and then freeze it again at the end of each session to look at the whole section.Then I picked from each acceptable film the letter of that film

I found that I preferred different film letters depending on whether it was still life, spider man in a room, head portrait of the video maker or landscape. I have set out below what happened:

Not chosen for any of the photos: XP2; Foma; Rollei RPX

Chosen for one of the 4 photos: JCH StreetPan;Agfa APX ; Ultrafine Extreme

Chosen for two of the photos: Tri-X; Rollei Retro; Kodak TMax; Delta 400; BergerPancro;

Chosen for three: Kentmere

Chosen for all four:HP5+

So on that basis the film that wins for me is the one I use the most HP5+ but Kentmere comes close

While I have only used XP2 once I had not expected to place it in the "not chosen at all " probably because it does seem to get uniformly good write-ups

I have never used Foma but I must admit that not having chosen it for any shot this has caused me to question whether I will now bother. Rollei RPX has never been on my radar and will now probably stay there

Mike

He doesn't show any prints, though.

No but like almost all the analogue videos of today you are relying on the inverted scans of the negs to represent what the subsequent prints might look like for film comparison purposes

If the inverted scans bear little or no resemblance to what a print might be like then I agree all bets are off but at that point very few if any of the film comparison videos can be relied upon to tell you anything

The good thing about the video was the blind test that you were invited to try. I found what I chose as my list in ascending order of preference to be useful

If he was to be believed it surprised him too when he gave them scores and came up with numbers he hadn't expected to

I may be being fooled into believing I have found at least some evidence that the film I use by far the most is in fact my film of choice but I believe there has to be some indication that I may be buying by sheer chance given how I started to use film the right film for me

If others have the time then I'd be interested in their findings

If nothing else it has reinforced my believe in the utter futility of "which film is the best " threads I see regularly on Photrio where the poor sod asking the question just gets a list of each respondent's favourite film without any attempt to quantify reasons.

If nothing else I am now resolved to give HP5+ a go at 800 and 1600 to see how it compares with the much more expensive D3200 which is what I use when forced to use higher speeds

Mike

Excellent choice Mike.. And I was somewhat relieved by his results as only last week I'd restocked HP5+ in both 35mm and 120 size.

Choosing a film because it is popular and not for the character it brings to your work :wag::wag: and letting someone who cannot be bothered to print them influence your decision :wag::wag:

The only film mentioned that I do not use is HP5+ if you are going to ask me why my answer is I stopped using it because 125 ISO was fast enough at the time..
Things change and now I do but not HP5+ :shock::eek::confused::o

Never mind I will use it again when the time is right :)

I started watching it but I lost interest when he was talking about his spreadsheet. I would prefer to watch a comparison using darkroom prints rather than scanning as I hate scanning negatives.

Dave