Best Color Print film for Black & White prints?

[fju]

I'm planning to have B&W prints made on a Fuji Frontier machine from shots taken with color film,

which films do you recommend and why? These will be portraits using 35mm film.

[larrydressler]

What Format? And why not just use B&W film? A chromatic type film like XP2+ is your best bet... I prefer to Scan then convert the negatives myself ... Burn to a CD then have them printed....

 

Any Color film shoud do if you are willing to work with them in Photoshop.

 

Larry<div></div>

[gary_watson]

My guiding principle is contrast: consumer print films like Fuji Superia tend, not surprisingly, to give higher contrast greyscale results; lower contrast pro print films do just the opposite. Each has its place and application. Chromogenics like XP2 can look quite different on colour-vs-b&w paper, too.

[r.t. dowling]

Are you using color film because you want to have the option of choosing color or B&W from the same roll?

 

If yes, then Kodak 400UC would be my choice. It's an excellent general-purpose color film anyway, and I really like how it looks when converted to grayscale.

 

If you don't need the option of color, Kodak BW400CN would be my choice. It can be processed by any color lab. It is very sharp and has much finer grain than any other ISO 400 color film.

[roger_smith4]

I recommend higher contrast films like Fuji 160C- I love it for B&W night conversions.

[josphy]

Almost any color film will work fine, in my opinion -- more important is the skill of the Frontier operator. They will tend to look pretty flat unless the technician first scans the negs, then bumps up the contrast and does a little adjustment on the PIC unit before sending them back to the machine for printing.

[james_wetherbee]

Since you plan on printing them on a frontier I'm going to agree with Roger Smith, you should use a higher contrast film, because unless you know the lab tech and can get him/her to up the contrast they will come out flat because it will be a standard greyscale conversion which is almost always more than a bit blah.

[fju]

Thank you for the responses. I'm going to use NPH and 400UC to see which one I like

better. I've used NPH many times but never for B&W.