Neopan 400 or HP5

Bought my first rangefinder and have been trying to decide on a B&W film for hand-held street photography.

A few months ago, I shot quite a bit of Neopan Acros 100 in 4x5 developed in Rollo Pyro and loved the results! IMHO Beautiful range of tonality, sharp, tight grain.

A year ago, I had used HP5 for a photography class but didn't like the results I got with D76, so I switched to FP4.

I guess I'm looking for a high-speed B&W film that will give me similar results to Fuji Acros shooting handheld in daylight as well as in low-light situations.

I don't do my own development. The lab I take my film to specializes in B&W film processing in Xtol, but they also do PMK Pyro on request.

Am I being unrealistic. Any suggestions?

For hand-held stuff, consider the Neopan 1600 and pulling it down to 800. Works great in PMK, too. I like the grain better than with the 400.

You might try shooting a couple of rolls of Acros 100, since you're used to it. A lot of very fine street photography has been done with films with 50 - 125 speed. The high speed lenses on modern rangefinders make it work well. I have no experience with Neopan 400, but it has a good reputation. I've found HP-5 to be a very versatile film, but you might prefer Tri-X in D-76. Any new film takes a little getting used to, but try a couple of rolls of each candidate and see which you like best.

Why not Ilford Delta 400?

Or, perhaps blasphemy I know but C41 B&W doesn't really have grain as such so BWCN400 or XP2 400 might also work especially since you aren't developing it yourself anyways. I used to shoot a fair bit of the predecessor to BWCN400 and shoot a fair bit of XP2 now and again and I like the results. It also can be scanned in 'color' for a nice redscale effect... scans nicely too:

Flip flops by Harry Pulley, on Flickr

Sepia street 2 by Harry Pulley, on Flickr

Whats in a purse by Harry Pulley, on Flickr

Sepia street by Harry Pulley, on Flickr

Though I think HP5+ works too:

Quilts by Harry Pulley, on Flickr

Click the flickr links for more of the same rolls in the set.

nworth said:

You might try shooting a couple of rolls of Acros 100, since you're used to it. A lot of very fine street photography has been done with films with 50 - 125 speed. The high speed lenses on modern rangefinders make it work well.

Click to expand...

Last weekend, I shot some FP4+ in low-light interior situations with a Minolta X-700 and 24mm Rokkor-X f2.8 lens mounted on a tripod. In some instances, had several exposures with long shutter speeds and aperture settings of f8-f11 that I felt I would not be able to maintain handheld. So, my assumption was that if I couldn't do this with a tripod mounted camera shooting at ISO 125, maybe for the shooting situations I'm anticipating, maybe I should consider a faster film.

Although, I admit, I should probably try shooting Acros handheld at larger apertures.

The way I see it, and I've shot a lot of different 400 speed films, the closest you'll get to ACROS in 35 mm will be TMax 400. The film is absolutely gorgeous. The apparent grain is on par with that of Plus-X - maybe a little bit more grainy than ACROS, but not something you're going to notice at modest print sizes It holds detail in shadow and highlight over a very wide scene brightness range, and does so easily at box speed given normal development in D-76. Grain is even less apparent if your developer of choice is XTOL. No muss, no fuss. Follow Kodak's recommendations and it just works. There's nothing bad I can say about it. If you need to push it a stop, don't bother. Mid tone and highlight contrast will be good even with 1 stop under exposure, though you will give up some shadow detail.