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.
I’ve gone through a couple go to films over the last couple years:
Rollei Retro 80S - bought a bulk roll of this when I first stated shooting. Works great with Rodinal and the grain is very nice. Main problem is the obviously slow speed, and it’s very contrasty.
Kentmere 400 - another one I bulk rolled for a while. Decent results, and I was tempted to switch to it again recently for budget reasons, but I noticed that I tended to have a lot more great shots with Tri-X, even though I shot a lot more Kentmere. Generally I found it was pretty low contrast. The emulsion apparently doesn’t have as much silver content as non-budget Harmon emulsions (ie. HP5+), so I wonder if that’s a factor in why I didn’t like it as much as Tri-X.
Kodak Tri-X - my pre-pandemic standard after giving up on bulk rolls. I would love to continue using it, but the new pricing is just too high.
These days I’m starting to standardize on Ilford HP5+. I’ve only shot a few rolls so far, but it seems comparable to Tri-X.
Kentmere is great for price, agreed on the low contrast but I was ok with that, easy to fix in post and sometimes I liked the "neutral" look of the shots, however I was getting very dirty scratched negatives from it. Clearly that is my fault, but I thought I was being careful with them and it doesn't happen to me with other films so I've switched to Fomapan.