Film / Developer Combos for portraiture

Thanks Thomas. Thats quite interesting. While its grainy as hell and you wouldn't expect to do any enlargement on it, nor could you effectively remove any skin blemishes, the grain itself conceles anything you might want to remove. Comlpletely different way of going about it. Did you soup in ID11?

Eric, I did think XP2. I hate the stuff in general use, but it does do well for portraits. Unfortunately I dumped whatever C41 B&W I had on ebay. Doh! (Bought a bulk load which included Kodak Portra 400 BW).

I'll chip in, with my Faves
I love Neopan 400. seems to handle highlights wonderfully, I process in either Rodinal or Microphen depending on grain.
(below is Rodinal)

T-Max might be quite good, certainly fine grain at the loss of some fine detail.

Mark

Mark, what was the TMax processed in?

Any chance of a 100% crop on them? The Neospan 400 in Rodinal was a lot less grainy than i would have expected.

Wishy the Neopan 400 was in Rodinal 1:50 10 mins with agitation for first min, then 2 inversions per min.
It is sharp and has good grain up to about 8x10, Neopan is a much underrated film IMO
The T-Max I normally dev in T-max dev although recently I've been using Microphen, and Rodinal (which works surprisingly well) .
I think the one above was in Microphen.
I think the smooth look you want would be best with T-Max 100 in Kodak T-Max dev especially as you are working with 35mm.
Just my opinion.
Mark