The loss BW400CN and my understanding of a replacement

[hpulley]

Scanned color can give some neat effects to XP2!


Sumac Tea (Picnik saturated edit) by Harry Pulley, on Flickr


Bridge 2 (Picnik saturated edit) by Harry Pulley, on Flickr

Almost looks like redscale which I suppose in some ways it is, or bluescale perhaps since the emulsion is actually blue which becomes red in negative...

 

[pgomena]

If you want the convenience of C-41 lab processing, I would second Casey Kidwell's suggestion that you try one of the Kodak Portra films and adjust the tones in that popular professional editing software. Not only can you control the contrast, but you can adjust the gray tones by adjusting color as well. It's either that or XP-2. Try a good bracket of exposures on XP-2, print each frame for comparison, and see if you like the results. If you want to try a b&w film as a replacement, I'd recommend the T-Max 400 as well. Good speed, fine grain, and you or your lab can pin down the right process.

Peter Gomena

 

[Aurum]

From my experience, XP2 can be handled perfectly well by your average modern minilab, as they have the latitude to correct for casts which prevents the sepia / greeny tones that you used to get years ago.

The other option is one that has been raised on these hallowed pages before, which s choose any colour C41 stock that works for you, from any manufacturer, in 120, and stand develop it in Rodinal 1:100 for an hour.
Gves good tonality and leaves you with the orange base for easy scanning / printing to RA4

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[pgomena]

I hadn't thought, but I recently accidentally processed a roll of Portra 160 in divided Pyrocat-HD. To my surprise, the film turned out beautifully - good shadow separation and highlight detail. Not something I would do again intentionally, but it did produce a perfectly usable negative.

Peter Gomena

 

[fschifano]

I can't believe that there are people actually recommending the practice of developing C-41 films using the B&W process. Yes, you get an image, so what? What you also get is retained silver which was never intended to be the image forming medium. That's why there's a bleach fix step. The silver records the image, the development develops the dyes, then the silver is stripped out. Just for grins, I've done C-41 in B&W process and you know what? It was horrible. I mean it really sucked. It wouldn't scan worth a damn because the retained silver made it look like a grainy mess. Printing it using traditional B&W processes was next to impossible because of the orange mask. Tossed the lot and said no more.

 

[Aurum]

Surprisingly R09 1:100 works well on C41 colour stock and scans sweet and easy, better than a lot of "Proper" B&W stock developed correctly.
D76 / ID11 or Ilfosol 3 with C41 stock gives shotgun grain and no contrast like you'd expect.

If people object to cross processing, well XP2 or Fuji Neopan 400CN are perfectly good alternates that perform as well as the Kodak material.

Whatever works to give the results you need.

 

[Ektagraphic]

You may also want to give Plus-X a whirl. It may give you what you are looking for. The times on the D-76 1 Gallon wrapper are slightly off..just so you know.