I've played with pretty much any film I come across, and in terms of cost-benefit I've settled on Fomapan films. I like the grain structure, they are some of the cheapest BW film available and have great latitude if you like to mess with stand development. I shot this photo on a Pentax ME camera using Fomapan 100. Developed at home with Ilfotec DDX and scanned with a Canon 5D Mk3 + Canon 100mm f2.8.
HP5 has been my go-to for a while. I have a friend who recently shot a roll of Dracula 64, an infrared sensitive film, and I'm excited to see how that turns out.
I've seen IR film for sale a few times but always worried to try it as it's not cheap and I figure I'm just going to waste it. Ask your friend to post some of those here, would be really interesting to see.