Originally posted by Archimedes the Dog Yeah, I have one photo I took on Fomapan which i really am happy with (below, Bronica ETRS on Fomapan), but in general I haven't loved Fomapan or, by extension, Earl Grey. I keep experimenting with different film stocks out of curiosity but in general I just prefer TMAX.
Nice. If you are constantly playing around with different film/developer combos, I'll argue you'll never get really good with any of them.
Look at you mountain picture. You have bright highlights in the snow and deep, lost exposure in the shadows of the conifer trees. A scene with a healthy dose of DR. Imagine for a moment that you took the identical picture plus adjusted the scan's contrast curve in the identical way as this picture but you adjusted your ISO up/down by 1/3 of a stop from box speed. Your middle gray (in the range of DR you captured) would move up/down just a small 1/3 of a stop in this large tonal scale range.
At the brighter end of what BW film can capture in a scene is a zone of no detail because its so bright. In that zone is over a stop of light. Similarly on the darkest zone just above base + fog of the film. There is recorded density but not any noticeable detail.
So if you change your ISO by 1/3-stop up/down from box speed, you add/lose 1/3-stop more exposure to a dark area that you can't see any detail in and add/lose 1/3-stop on the high end that you can't see any detail in. So the image really still looks the same. Just a tiny, barely perceived, shadow or highlight detail has been added or lost that is just above or below the these threshold zones.
What I'm saying 1/3-stop is pretty insignificant for many sunny 16 condition pictures using BW film with its typical +/- stop of latitude plus your contrast curve adjustment latitude you have just with the scanning software. But that's just my humble opinion. Your milage may vary.