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+ Is definitely my go-to. I usually push it 1-2 stops as well.
I've also been trying Kentmere 400, but I've been having trouble developing it at home. Idk if the massive dev chart is just wrong, but the times I've used from there have cooked my rolls a little too much.
Interesting, I've used the dev chart to develop K400 and I thought they were fine, what developer are you using? Although, maybe they are getting overdeveloped and I just don't see it.