Recomended 4x5 B&W film

[William Sherman]

I have been away from large format for awhile and want to get back into it. A long time ago I shot Kodak Plus X and loved fine grain. Looking at the photo supply houses it would appear PX is no longer made. What is the modern equivalent? Ilford Delta? I like the slower films. I notice that Tri-X is now rated at 320. How is the grain on this film? Any recommendations or info on B&W film would be appreciated. Thanks.

Bill

[Allen in Montreal]

..... A long time ago I shot Kodak Plus X and loved fine grain...... Ilford Delta? I like the slower films. I notice that Tri-X is now rated at 320. How is the grain on this film? Any recommendations or info on B&W film would be appreciated. Thanks.

Bill

Good morning Bill, and welcome to LFPF (I am a bit of a newbie to the forum too).

I loved Plus-X too, I am down to my last 2 boxes in the freezer.
I am not one to play with a million films, so I can only comment on TXP, I love Tri-x too and when processed in D-76 at 1:1 the grain is pretty good. I have seen many beautiful pictures taken on T-max 100, but I just can't seem to fall in love with that film, Delta either for that matter.

[chilihead]

Fuji Acros 100 - D76

[Allen in Montreal]

Fuji Acros 100 - D76

There seems to be many fans of this emulsion on this board, for those of us who have never tried the film, can you give us a brief description of the film's palette.
Thank you,

[Keith Tapscott.]

I have been away from large format for awhile and want to get back into it. A long time ago I shot Kodak Plus X and loved fine grain. Looking at the photo supply houses it would appear PX is no longer made. What is the modern equivalent? Ilford Delta? I like the slower films. I notice that Tri-X is now rated at 320. How is the grain on this film? Any recommendations or info on B&W film would be appreciated. Thanks.

Bill

Ilford FP4 plus is closer to Plus-X than Delta 100.
http://www.ilfordphoto.com/products/...essional+Films

[Andrew O'Neill]

Ilford FP4 is closer to Plus X than Acros and Delta 100 according to my own testing.

[MIke Sherck]

Kodak's Tmax-100. I've tried others but keep coming back.

Mike

[Bruce Watson]

I have been away from large format for awhile and want to get back into it. A long time ago I shot Kodak Plus X and loved fine grain. Looking at the photo supply houses it would appear PX is no longer made. What is the modern equivalent? Ilford Delta? I like the slower films. I notice that Tri-X is now rated at 320. How is the grain on this film? Any recommendations or info on B&W film would be appreciated. Thanks.

Bill

Much depends on how you define "awhile" and "A long time ago." The modern t-grain films date back to the early 1980s IIRC.

Just about all the kodak films have been updated within the last four or five years. Tri-X was updated yet again when they moved to the new coating facility for example. I think 100Tmax was too. 400Tmax was updated just last year.

From what I can tell, the Ilford films haven't changed much at all in at least 10 years, probably considerably longer than that.

Fuji's Acros is available in sheets. It's a 100 speed film that has a grain structure somewhere between "traditional" and modern. It's response to light is different from most other films as well, and it has a large following because of these things.

Then there are the old school films from eastern Europe. And the list goes on...

Plus-X is gone in sheets. But if you are starting back, do you really want to start where you were "awhile" back? If so, then Ilford's FP4+ is perhaps your best bet, or maybe the Ekfe 100 speed film.

But before you do that you might want to consider the newer films. They have a lot to offer. King of the hill IMHO right now is 400Tmax, aka TMY-2. The graininess is probably pretty close to what you got from Plus-X 20 years ago, but with at least two more stops of real film speed. Reciprocity performance that Plus-X couldn't even dream of. And it's flat and linear out as far as you can expose. 400Tmax works really well with modern developers like XTOL and Pyrocat-HD, as well as the oldies but goodies like D-76.

Just because you used to use Plus-X doesn't mean you can't change. This from the guy who finally made the switch from 5x4 Tri-X to 400Tmax just this last spring and who's wishing he hadn't wasted so much time on Tri-X.

[Ken Lee]

What Bruce said about TMY. Bruce didn't just give you an anecdotal recommendation, he told you why:

(1) Linear response to light

(2) Linear response to developer time

(3) Excellent reciprocity characteristics, which is really the same as (1)

(4) High speed - like around 200 or 250

You can see some charts which support these statements, when TMY is developed in PyroCat HD, here.

Note that FP4+ and Acros are also fairly linear. I don't know how well Acros does with reciprocity, but FP4+, being an older formula, is unremarkable.

The one film which seems to have it all, as Bruce has pointed out, is TMY.

If charts are not persuasive, perhaps you would like to see some sample images: Here is one, and here is another, although almost all of the images on my site were made with TMY and PyroCat HD. Both are straight prints, with no burning or dodging.

[William Sherman]

Thanks to everyone for the information. It looks like I'm going to have to give Tmax and Pyrocat-HD a try. The examples given are very impressive.

Bill