[Leica] Re: C 41 or conventional B & W film?

["David Kieltyka" <daverk@email.msn.com>]

Tony Salce <NadinaTony@bigpond.com> wrote (edited):

> I use a Leica IIIa and a 50mm Summar. It's a wonderful camera
> and lens. My photography is centred on family and travel. I
> would shoot only say 40–50 rolls of film a year. I love black
> and white and am tossing up whether to plunge into setting up
> a darkroom. The cost of laboratory printed black and white is
> exorbitant here in Australia and the results (in my view) are
> average.
>
> Given the amount of shooting I do is it worth setting up a
> darkroom or are the C41 films, TCN and XP2, the better way to
> go? How do these films differ (apart from archival qualities)
> from their more conventional counterparts in respect of the
> final printed image?

I don't see this as an either/or situation. Even when I had a darkroom I
shot lots of Ilford XP1 and later XP2 simply because I liked it so much. XP2
Super is a wonderful film IMO, fine-grained and capable of capturing a
longer tonal range than most if not all conventional B/W films. Overexposed
a stop you get even finer grain with almost no loss in sharpness. Its
drawbacks compared to silver-based B/W are poorer longevity and lack of
development tweakability. I don't consider the latter much of a drawback,
though...the film has tremendous latitude and since I'm scanning the
negatives I've got all the digital tweakability I could ever want. :-)

I plan to install a darkroom in my current home next year but I imagine that
rather than using XP2 Super less I'll probably just use more film in
general. Which is a good argument actually for setting up a
darkroom...assuming you enjoy (or at least don't dislike) the development
and printing processes you'll almost certainly end up taking more pictures.

- -Dave-