Background

As I've been getting more and more into film photography I've wanted to learn about the differences between certain film stocks. I'm personally especially interested in the cheaper films as frugality is important to me. It's not about always shooting the best but getting the most value after all. I've tried to do some research into this and just can't find a lot of information though about these cheap economy films and so I decided to start doing comparisons myself. In this case I shot a series of test photos using Kentmere 400 and Ultrafine Extreme 400 on a pair of Canon AF35ML II cameras - my favorite point and shoots. I tried to compose both photos the same on each camera though there will be some variation in framing and exposure as I'm shooting these hand held on automatic cameras. They were scanned using neutral settings and the only editing I've done is some spot healing to remove dust and output sharpening.

Why these films?

The question is going to come up so I might as well tackle it now. For me - a photographer living in the United States with easy access to online vendors - these two films represent the lowest cost options in 400 speed black and white photography. This won't necessarily hold true for you as pricing/availability vary depending on where you live. In this case though I wanted to evaluate the cheapest options available to me. I did consider options like Fomapan or Kodak Tri-X but they couldn't compete with the rock bottom prices these other films enjoy.

What this comparison isn't

It should also go without saying that this isn't going to be a highly technical deep dive into the film stocks. I'm not going to be looking at MTF charts, testing reciprocity, or analyzing response curves. The truth of the matter is that I don't have the time or the interest to get that technical. There are too many variables that have to be controlled in order to make such a comparison possible. Instead we'll just be looking at images coming from scanned negatives and drawing our conclusions from there.

About the films