Chemical romance

Tourists sheltering from a downpour in a boathouse at Wroxham, Norfolk

Black and white image making is still popular with lots of snappers and like them, I love working in the medium. There's something powerful & strong about a good monochrome image - maybe its the lack of distracting colours or something else but you just can't beat it for focussing the viewers attention.

I do use digital for some black and white work but i prefer using film and I've decided to have a look at the chemical side to see if any improvements can be made to image quality. For many years i used Kodak TMAX film ( 400asa but not the 100 - never did like that film) and liked the results that the film gave but about 10 years ago i started to use more and more Ilford until finally in 2001, I went to Ilford materials exclusively.

I still use Kodak TMAX developer for my processing of B+W film but i think i may change to Ilford's Ilfotec DX-X. My reasons are simply that i think Ilford chemicals may produce better results with Ilford film but just to make sure i will be making comparisons between the two - i do like the results that TMAX developer gives and have done since 1991. I'll probably end up using both!

Any test comparison results will be posted on the blog.