Film names

Well, I've been looking around to see what kind of film suits what situation, but I've

come up with another problem: what on earth are these films called? Seems there's

about 5 different names for kodak max, or does that count as kodak gold 400? Is the

kodak HD 400 the same as the old Royal Gold 400? Or what about royal superia? Is

T400CN the same as the consumer "Kodak Black and White Film"?

Fuji isn't much better: is there any difference between the various Super G, Superia

and Superia X-Tra films (at the same speeds, of course)?

I think i need an asprin. Any ideas?

Max is different from Gold. Per previous posts, HD 400 is a new name for Royal Gold 400, I think. T400Cn is different from "Kodak Black and White Film".

For unknown reasons (and this really irritates me)- Kodak has a nice data sheet on their website for T400CN- but not for the B&W- one is a "pro" film and gets the data sheet, other is not.

Kodak "Black & White" (also known for a while as Select Series Black & White +) is allegedly the consumer version of Portra 400BW. T400CN is slightly different.

Portra 400BW (and, presumably, Black & White) is supposed to be easier to print on color paper. They say T400CN is easier to print on black & white paper.

<cite>Kodak has a nice data sheet on their website for T400CN- but not for the B&W</cite>

<p>They do on their U.S. site, at least. From <a href="http://www.kodak.com/cgi-bin/webCatalog.pl?product=KODAK+Black+and+White+400+Film">the page for this film</a>, there's a link for technical information near the top left, which leads to <a href="http://www.kodak.com/global/en/consumer/products/techInfo/f15/f15.shtml">the data sheet</a>. I don't look for datasheets for Kodak's consumer films very often, but I usually have pretty good luck at finding them.</p>

<p>Kodak Max Ultra Zoom Versatility Plus Bright Sun Flash Whatever They're Calling It This Week is the family of names for what used to be called Gold (some parts of Kodak's Web site still list Gold as the name for some of these films). Kodak releases new versions of these films from time to time; if you see something like "400-4" on your negatives, the -4 part is the generation number. High Definition 400 takes over from Royal Gold 400; see <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=005KhQ&unified_p=1">previous discussion</a> for more info on that film. As someone else pointed out, 400BW and BWC appear to be the same film (the info on the datasheets appears to be identical); T400CN is a brother but not an identical twin to these two. When T400CN first came out, Kodak claimed that <a href="http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f2350/f2350.jhtml?id=0.3.8.20.12.12.3&lc=en#001">either B&W or colour paper would work well with it</a>; when 400BW came out, Kodak claimed <A href="http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/films/portraBW/qAndA.jhtml?id=0.3.8.20.10.4.8&lc=en">400BW was good for colour paper and T400CN was designed for B&W paper</a>. As BWC is a consumer film, the assumption is that it will be dropped off at your local one-hour lab, drug store, grocery store, or whatever and be printed on colour paper.</p>

<p>I know less about Fuji's line of films so I'll have to let someone else address that.</p>