More about film

All of the good instant film is a thing of the past. Fuji makes a tiny little sticker-sized instant film that is pretty bad, compared to what Polaroid used to make, and the Impossible Film Project film is appallingly bad. So much for instant film. If you have an old Polaroid film camera, my advice to you is to either throw it away or convert it to use 4x5 negative film. There are several people out there doing Polaroid conversions and they mostly convert the more desirable rangefinder Polaroids. Those can be made into very good negative film cameras.

Of the slide films, pretty much the only ones left that are worth considering, in my opinion, are Fuji Velvia 100 F and Kodak Ektachrome. Neither of those compares to the stunning image quality of a couple of the discontinued slide films (notably Kodachome 25 and Kodachrome 64) but it is what we have left.

There are still a few pretty decent color negative films around. The best of these are probably Kodak Ektar 100, Fuji Velvia 50, and Kodak Portra 160. Portra is a very well-known portrait film that is best known for accurately reproducing skin tones. Ektar and Velvia are both films with high saturation, and so they are probably better used for landscapes and flora. Velvia leans toward green and has higher saturation across the entire spectrum, while Ektar leans toward red, so you might want to keep that in mind when choosing a film for certain subjects. Speaking of Kodak and Fuji, I might mention that Kodak films usually lean more toward blue and Fuji films lean more toward green. Portra is a notable exception to this rule. This means that Kodak films are more suitable for shooting people and Fuji films are more suitable for shooting foliage and landscapes. With a little thought, you can use the film's properties to enhance the impact of those colors in your photos. Kodak's and Fuji's consumer grade films show this tendency to lean more toward blue and green more strongly, and this can also be used to your advantage. Personally, I would not use any color films other than Fuji or Kodak. They have been tweaking their films for far longer than anyone else, manufacturing color film is very complicated, and they have way too much of a lead on everyone else for any other manufacturer to come very close to being as accurate (and even they miss the mark quite often, which is why I have left out mentioning several of their films here).

In black and white there is a rather wide selection to choose from. Many of the best ultra-high resolution films are gone (Agfa APX25, Gigabite, Macophot 25, Efke KB25), but there are still a few left, like Adox CMS 20 II, Kodak 2468, Rollei Copex, and Rollei 25. Kodak 2468 is VERY slow, with an exposure index of about ISO 0.5, but it is very fine grained and the resolution is very high; its exceptional slowness makes it unsuitable for anything but entirely stationary subjects though. Rollei Copex was originally intended for use as microfilm. It is now offered in 35mm, but must be developed in Spur developer if it is to be used as a pictorial film. As you can imagine, it has a very fine grain. With the Spur developer, it has very accurate duplication of tonal values. Without the Spur developer, it has extremely high contrast: black, white, and not much in between.

The more commonly used b&w films, that I am experienced with, are Ilford HP5 400, Ilford Delta Pro 100 and 400, Ilford FP4 Plus 125, Kodak T-Max 100 and 400, Kodak Plus-X 125, Kodak Tri-X, and Fuji Neopan Acros 100. Of those, my personal favorites are T-Max 100, Tri-X and Neopan. Kodak T-Max is a very good film for fine art applications -- because its extreme sensitivity to pretty much anything you can do to it during development allows you to manipulate the grain. Depending on how you develop it and in what developing agent, you can get grainless negatives, grain from hell (like medium grit sandpaper), or anything in between. Neopan has a very fine grain. Tri-X is the most foolproof film ever made; you can develop it in nearly anything, with poor lab technique and still get good results. It is a good film to use in complicated lighting. Ilford Delta Pro is another film that is tricky to develop. You need to watch your temperatures because sudden shifts in temperature can cause the film to reticulate (crack up like a dried out mud flat). Kodak Plus-X 125 is a very old standard film. Like Tri-X, it is almost goof-proof, but not to quite the same degree, and it responds more differently to different developing agents than Tri-X does.

There are also some consumer grade b&w films, like C41 process Kodak film, and Foma. There are even some lower grade films from Lomography  (like "Lucky" and "Grey Lady" ) and some special purpose films like Rollei infrared film. 

All of the b&w films and many of the color films, fall into the categories of tabular grain or cubic grain films. The individual grains of silver in the emulsion of tabular grain films are crystals that lie flat, like fish scales. In theory, this gives you a smoother transition from black to white, but in practice, that only works if everything goes perfectly. T-Max 100 is a tabular grain film, and it is one of the trickiest films to develop that exists. As previously mentioned, it is hypersensitive to just about anything you can do to it during development. If the chemistry is too warm, if you use anything other than T-Max developing agent, if you give it anything other than VERY gentle agitation, then the "scales" stand up instead of lying flat and you get grain from hell. Looking on the positive side of this, If you know this is going to happen, you can USE this quirk to enhance a photo wherein a coarse grain might be desirable. Cubic grained films are films wherein the silver crystals are ground into granules. These granules can be extremely fine (much finer than talcum powder) and so all of the ultra-high resolution films are cubic grained. Cubic grained films are far easier to develop, because they do not have scales that can stand up.