Things aren't always black and white - Kodak BW 400CN - #AllTheFilm

So I'm a little spoiled to being able to drop my film off and pick up my scans and negatives the next day.  I kind of suck at utilizing the postal service, and I have the patience of a wasp, so it just works for me to be able to drive two rolls into town, run some errands, and come back the next day or the next week, and I know they will be waiting for me.  There's only one catch.

They don't offer processing for black and white.

And this makes me sad.

So I decided to shoot a roll of Kodak BW 400CN, which is C-41 (color) process film.

The first thing I noticed: a rather beautiful inconsistency in tone, depending of lighting; as in some were almost a true black and white, some were more sepia, and some were this strangely beautiful cyan-like monochrome.

So without a ton of rambling, I'll just show you the resulting images from my roll, and you can see for yourself.

Is it just me, or do the highlights have an awesome cyan tone to them?

Notice the sepia tones are rather strong in this one.

I promise I have more than one kid, but this is the one that likes the camera.

So the results (for me at least) were fairly inconsistent; in fact, I did a slight desaturation on a few of them because the sepia was rather strong, and I'm not a fan of the brown tones in my black and white images, but I left enough for you to see the variations in the results.  It's an acceptable subsitute for decent black and white film, as long as you know you may need to desaturate if consistency in tones is important in your work.  It will definitely have a place in my bag, at least until I learn to develop my own, or develop enough patience to send some off for processing.

Until next time-

xoxox

Leah J

Technical Details:

Nikon F100

Kodak BW 400CN (rated at box speed)

28mm 2.8D

Lensbaby Composer Pro + Sweet 35 Optic

Processed at Dury's of Nashville and scanned on Noritsu