(I’ve been somewhat resistant to turning this into a photography blog. But that seems silly since photography occupies about 10% of my brain these days.)

For almost 2 years, I’ve been getting back into film and part of that has meant finding my way in the film landscape of 2023. It’s a whole different place than when I stepped away and picked up a digital camera in 2004. Then, film was available in every corner shop, gas station, or pharmacy. There were even multiple local camera stores that did photo processing. The last of those in my area, Murray’s, (a mere 30 miles away), closed in October. Now there’s no film processing within 90 miles of Green Bay. The cost of a roll of buying, developing, and scanning a black and white roll of film—done in the most straightforward and convenient way—is now at least $25 plus shipping both ways. While photography was never as cheap as people remember (inflation’s hidden the true cost from our nostalgic sense of the past), $25 is a lot and color is even more. And my aim has been to get my kids into black and white film photography too, which I’ve done by making it freely available to them (eventually I will make them process and scan their own). So cost is a big issue, this is supposed to be fun.

So bulk rolling, yeah… and home development and scanning. These are the obvious things to do to keep the cost down. But which film stock? The first 100′ roll I bought was Kentmere 400. Here’s Kentmere:

It’s pretty good, certainly good enough for me. But I always felt like it lacked something. Kodak Tri-X and Plus-X used to be my go tos. Here’s Plus-X:

I’m not good at analyzing film. I’m always impressed by people who can look at these images and speak authoritatively about tonal curves and such. My gut feeling is that Kentmere 400 has—forgive me for the imprecision of this language—muddy grays and lacks the snap of Kodak’s film stocks. So why not shoot Tri-X? It’s $12 per 36-exposure roll or $160 for 100′. Kentmere 400 is about half that.

So when I discovered that you could buy 400′ rolls of a Kodak film related to Tri-X for $300ish per 400′ I was elated. This is Double-X, also known as Kodak 5222. It’s a motion picture film that’s been around since the 1950s. I bought a reel (it came in a metal can!) and loaded about 100′ of it into a bulk loader and shot some. Here’s Double-X:

I like this look very much. And yes, it’s a pretty subtle difference from the Kentmere. Thank goodness, because 400′ of it is quite a lot and I think it will last most of the year. So this feels like a significant discovery that I owe to this thread at Rangefinder Forum. These final two pictures were developed in T-Max developer for 6 minutes.