B&W films for medium format

[shawn_wrobel]

I've been experimenting a lot lately. I've had great success developing Ilford Delta 100 & 400 in Kodak X-tol developer. The Delta 400 was bit grainy but the 100 looked superb. IMHO HP5+ shot at ISO400 gave an ugly grain in X-tol but Tri-X shot at ISO200 looked great with very rich blacks. Agfapan 25 also looked good with X-tol. But for the highest speed with virtually no grain, I found that nothing was better than Ilford XP-2 which is the film I would travel with my Mamiya 7. I also use a Hassy 500c and print on Ilford Multigrade IV FB

[john_melanson]

PMK with tgrain film gets that same smoothness, but is very sharp. The pyro stain fills in the gaps similar to XP2.

[gene_crumpler3]

Try T-max 100 using ethol TEC developer. You can shoot at EI 320 and get results that are only surpassed by tech pan 6415. When I moved up to a pentax 67 this year,after years of shooting tech pan in my nikons and using ethol TEC to achieve grainless 16X20's at EI 100, I tested a number of films including XP400, tri-X pro, ilford pan F, t-max 400 and technical pan. It is great having the speed, it gets you off the tripod and using 1/250 and 1/500, even with a 4x 25A filter.

I don't understand why more people don't use TEC as I have found it to be as close to a universal developer as there is. Good grain and 1 1/2 to 2 stops speed boast. A $13 batch of A and B solution can develop 200 rolls of 35mm and if refrigerated, the stock solutions last 3-4 years. Important, follow the directions on agitation exactly! Of course T-max is very development sensitive.

[brian_turner]

I've found that the combination of AgfaPan 200/400 with Rodinol 1:25 is good. Ilford HP5 can also be used as well. With all other films and developers I've used, I've almost always had to use filters to print. But with this combination, if your exposure is right, you shouldn't have to use filters at all in the darkroom. The negatives have beautiful contrast to them.