There is a New Film out there!!!

Barn in Blackstone, Massachusetts  

This photograph was taken on Kodak T-Max T400 CN  film. T400 CN  film is a color negative film that produces black and white images when developed with standard (C-41) color negative chemicals. The beautiful thing is that you can take this film to your local 1 hour processing lab and get your prints back in an hour! No more hunting for someone to do your b/w work. This type of film was made available by Ilford several years ago, and is now called Ilford Super XP2, but I never tried it. This new film from Kodak was my choice because my photofinisher  liked the Kodak film better, so I gave it a shot. The resultant negatives can be printed with conventional b/w materials, or taken back and made into enlargements or whatever, by your 1 hour lab. If the lab uses their regular color paper, sepia or blue toned images are easily produced. Some labs have B/W paper, and the results are good either way. The grain looks very fine and the negatives look quite normal. A characteristic of these chromogenic films is that they exhibit wide exposure tolerances. This film, it is said, can be exposed from ISO 50 to 2000. Amazing! I believe the film comes in 12, 24 and 36 exposure loads. All in all, a great film for when you want something quick and good. My photo above was exposed at the rated 400 speed.

Since I wrote the information above, Kodak has announced a new Black and White film that can be developed by color labs. The new film is called"Black and White +" and is an ISO 400 speed film. The main difference I can determine is that the new film is designed to be produce a B/W print on color paper. The film I used above could be printed on either B/W or color paper.

   

The same barn in color the next day. This barn is so beautiful I had to take it in color, too. Adjacent to the barn is a two story cider mill. On the first lovely Fall day, we must have seen a hundred bluebirds along the stone wall. They were probably migrating, because there were fewer each day.



All photos were taken with a Canon EOS A2 camera with a Canon 28-80mm US lens and a polarizer. I even used a tripod to enable me to use my smallest apertures(~F22) to achieve maximum depth of field without worrying about hand shake. The color shots  were on Fuji 400 Superia Color Print film.

All photos by Fred Sgrosso

This page was updated on 21 June1999

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