Just wondered if anybody on the forum does any Black & White film photography? I keep a 35mm Canon slr loaded with Ilford XP2 (ok, I know it's not a 'proper' black and white film due to the colour developing process - but it keeps the costs down for me). I use orange and yellow filters. Not into it in a big way, just enjoy doing something a little bit different. I use a 28-80 zoom lens and a bigger 100-300mm telephoto too, don't have any prime lenses nowadays. Used to have a couple of Minolta X-700 bodies and used Ilford FP4 and HP5 years ago. I've never tried developing B&W films myself, other than at school a few moons ago, as it always seemed, messy and involved.

Not film any more, I I do shoot in digital on my G12 in black and white. I think some of the best images I have seen have been black & white.

I also used in the past xp1 & 2 & FP4 & Hp5.

Sent from somewhere over the rainbow.

Yes, I do! I have several film bodies - Nikon F80, Contax 167MT and a Yashica FR1. I also have two medium format cameras - lubitel 166 and I recently bought a Yashica124G MAT.

I have a darkroom too, so have developed a couple of films in there and done some prints, not had a lot of time the last few months but will get it back up and running soon. At the moment the darkroom is set for black and white, but I shoot colour too and just send it to a lab for now lol.

I have some pan F 50 roll film to try in the Yashica mat soon, along with some portra 400 and 800. Will be getting a film scanner too so I can get them on my pc

Of course I shoot digital mostly but still enjoy film.

I'd like to get a medium format camera, aside from the different physical size, the photos have a completely different look to them, like old-time photos from the 40s and 50s. I've used Pan F50 35mm film, I ran out of film whilst on holiday a couple of years ago and I spyed a small photographic shop in Sopron, Hungary, they had F50 so I bought a couple of rolls.

I've read about some of the older Eastern European brands of black and white film, variable quality, grainy, I fancy giving them a go sometime, just for a change. I don't mind grain sometimes - character.

I've had some nice results converting colour digital shots to black and white with the free XnView program, using colour channels rather than an automated b&w conversion, you can simulate the results of using colour filters with b&w film.

I like B&W, you look for other things in the shot, shape, shadows, textures etc.

Ahhhh XP-2 fantastic revolutionary B&W film

Many happy memories developing that at home, good times!

A decent medium format photo should certainly not look like something from the 50's! I think you might have been looking at the holga styles shots, where they use a cheap plastic lense to get a 'dreamy' or often out of focus photo. I don't understand it myself, I think most of them look awful. If anything medium format photos should be better due to the negative size compared to 35mm. The next stage up, large format, was and probably still is used for landscape to capture detail and enlarge to bigger sizes without loss of image quality.

The lubitel is fairly cheap, so doesn't produce wonderful mages, but the Yashica has a fairly decent lens on it, and they can produce beautiful photos. I need to get out with it properly, but it's a pain because it's all manual, and the image you see through its viewfinder thing is mirror image so backwards lol!

Edited 22 April, 201214 yr by Loz

It wasn't the Holga 'out-of-focus' style photos I'd seen Loz, these were wonderfully in-focus but the depth of field seemed somehow different, these were shots of cars from the '50s I'd been looking at and just seemed different to 35mm photos. I don't mind all-manual cameras, I used to use old 35mm cameras, an Ilford Sportsman and also a Carl Zeiss Werra. The Werra was unusual, to wind the film on, you twisted the lens body round, rather than operating a wind-on lever.

I don't know why they'd be so different, there shouldn't be, but I imagine it's down to the camera used for those shots. There are lots of groups on Flickr that display images for medium format cameras. I just have a couple up from the lubitel. Looking forward to getting some developed from the Yashica because they should be vastly better

Winding on is my biggest problem, because I'm not used to it at all! Manual focus is fine, as I have to do that with my Zeiss lenses anyway, and also for macro work, but winding on I just never have to do except with the medium formats lol. The Yashica won't let you double expose though, so that helps!