Another Kodak BW 400CN question

[jamesdfloyd]

Today I took all the great advice I got 2-weeks ago about using Kodak 400CN and put it to use today.

Rated at 200ISO and told the Costco lab people (who by the way have a list of my special requests now) to adjust the prints to monochrome channel and make no adjustments to the scans. All and all, the roll is mostly usable. But now that I am doing the "Photoshop thing" on a couple of them, I have more questions.

1) Can you use traditional black & white filters with this film? I ask, because today was overcast and on & off rain and I would naturally have wanted to use a yellow filter for contrast and/or a green filter for some of the foliage shots.

2) In your experience, are lighting conditions you feel do not work well with this film?

Thanks,

J.D.

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Yes you can use the colored filters to adjust the tonal rendering of it just like any other BW film.

There are not really any lighting conditions I think the film is terrible for, but remember that you cannot adjust its developing time to adjust contrast like you can with regular BW films. For low contrast light this is not an issue, just increase contrast in Photoshop. For very harsh sunny light, the contrast is harder to tame. I tend to avoid such light with ANY film, though.

[jamesdfloyd]

Thanks Christopher.

My "problem" with this film 2-weeks ago was because I was shooting it at 400ISO on a bright day - contrast was a monster.

[remegius]

My experience with this film is that it is a true 400 ISO film, but you can shoot it anywhere from 100 to 1600 ISO. On the same roll! True, at 100 you will have dense negatives, and at 1600 shadow detail will be limited. But at any speed the images will be serviceable. Try it yourself. Just load up and shoot a test roll using a run of ISO speeds. You will be amazed at what this remarkable film can do.

Cheers...

Rem

[Allan Reade]

J.D.
The 'Camera Raw' plug in for Photoshop is great for tweaking contrast and adjusting the blacks once the negatives have been scanned.
Have fun,
Allan

[Lss]

Originally Posted by remegius

My experience with this film is that it is a true 400 ISO film, but you can shoot it anywhere from 100 to 1600 ISO.

I have mostly used this film between ISO 200 and 400. I really like the results around 200/280. A couple of night shots I had to seriously underexpose (one camera, one lens, one roll of film type of scenario), I believe it was at ISO 3200 or so. The results were pretty bad that time. What you are saying is quite promising however. I think I will need to experiment in a more controlled way between ISO 100 and 1600. Going to 800 should be no problem obviously, but usable at 1600 would be nice. Let's see what happens. Thanks for the comment, Rem!

[rolleistef]

You mean you can actually use it at 1600 and have it processed at 400 without any major problem? That's intersting, but no more italian supermarket making 2 for 4€ sales in sight

[sevo]

It is a nice film, the only snag is that it creates a whole chain of problems in printing - in my opinion it is a excellent film for scanning, but if you want to do analogue prints, use XP-2 or classic silver-based black and white film.

BW400CN has a mask, supposedly to print to b&w on regular colour paper and printers - but it has never held up to that promise. Printing to RA4 is usually disappointing, as few to no 1hr labs maintain their printers and educate their staff well enough that they will deliver prints without inconsistent tinting. And the mask hampers printing to silver based paper, even more so since fixed contrast paper has become a rarity and Kodak dropped the one variable gradation paper that was tuned to behave gracefully with that irregular film.

[sevo]

Originally Posted by rolleistef

You mean you can actually use it at 1600 and have it processed at 400 without any major problem?

Well, without any problem would be exaggerated. But it behaves significantly more gracefully to a two stop underexposure than classic black and white film, and still visibly better than the T-grainers...