New film, Kentmere 200, and the state of BW film manufacturing 🌅.
Ilford released a new budget-friendly ISO 200 black-and-white film, Kentmere PAN 200. This is their first addition to the monochrome film range in a long while.
The challenge in marketing and selecting BW film is that it’s hard to visually identify. A survey of nearly 600 analogue photographers revealed that most of us can’t tell our BW films apart: analog.cafe/r/photographer… ¹.
However, there are consequential differences between black-and-white films, even if they’re hard to see, which can make or break a photo: analog.cafe/r/how-to-choos….
Thankfully, BW film production has been recovering from setbacks and even thriving lately, giving us more tools to produce great images. Film Ferrania is back on track (kosmofoto.com/2025/04/film…), which is great because their film has the most recognizable look (see ¹,☝️). Light Lens Lab made a post describing their progress with a new film sensitizing equipment: lightlenslab.com/blogs/upc…, and I even saw freshly-sensitized Film Washi in the wild (now mostly sold out). Meanwhile, Kodak has dropped prices on Tri-X: analog.cafe/r/colour-film-…
Dmitri May 8, ‘25