New Kentmere 120 Film Review - An Impressive Budget Performer 

The leading lines of the shot taken at 3:25 into the video is mesmerizing! I could easily see that shot being framed in peoples homes. Absolutely lovely...

An extremely useful evaluation of the 120 version of Kentmere. You got to give it to Harmond for doing this for the community.

Thank you for taking the time to put this together, Your images are so good, (almost too good for the price point :).

looks great! looking forward to shooting them

So happy that Kentmere is available in 120! I’ve had great results from them in 35mm.

I honestly can't wait to give these a try!

Great stuff Kyle. Love the look of these shots, particularly the slightly more contrasty 100 ISO version. Definitely put me in the mood to shoot some b&w, I look forward to trying out some Kentmere in 120.

Beautiful shots and helpful review. Cheers.

Great review Kyle. We’re both really looking forward to shooting both. I think it’s like you said, somewhat predictable, but that’s totally fine for a budget friendly stock. Love the photo at 8 minutes in. Jamie

Thanks for making these reviews! I just got a medium format camera and I need to get it ready for a road trip.

Great review! I'd be interested to see a deep dive into exposure latitude across several film stocks some day. B/W, colour, slide film, comparisons, things to consider when shooting, etc.

Nice! Thanks for the review!

i exclusively shoot pan 400 and 100 for my black and white work mostly because of the price some im glad to hear that the 120 versions look great!

Thank you Ilford and thanks Kyle.

great video as usual!!

Lovely images Kyle!

and just like that, ive got a bunch of this film in my shopping cart. excellent look at this film!

Love the review and photos looks stunning ❤!! Would love to see a video specifically about light metering and best practices specially with B&W films 😊

Super useful, thanks! Didn't even know about the 35mm version so will be interested to see for myself how it compares to Fomapan.

I've used the Kentmere films in 35mm only. They work well at box speed, where in my experience the Foma films do not. With Foma, I got the best results by pulling one stop; Foma 400 at 200, Foma 100 at 50, with reduced development. Better shadow detail with reduced grain and contrast. They're fine at those speeds, but Kentmere is better. I think the Kentmere films MAY be a little less tolerant of underexposure than the flagship Ilford ones, whenever I have the opportunity to expose carefully, I tend to expose all B&W films a little more, and develop a little less. My output is still wet prints, so I'm not sure how this would work with scanning.

Got a few rolls of Kentmere 400 on the way. I'd like to plus one on seeing an exposure test video😀

Kentmere 400 in 35mm has been my goto low light film stock (easily pushed to 3200). Have yet to try it this way in 120.

I’m definitely going to try these, HP5 has gotten quite expensive for me as a student. Love how the photos look!

Excellent review, I feel like you really summarized this film well just based on my experiences with Kentmere in 35mm. I also found it to have more contrast than hp5 but I actually liked that. I Used to shoot arista as an inexpensive b&w but didn’t like its grain and grays and found kentmere to be a a better, more predictable film stock

Perfect !! Amazing video.. Can you talk more about how we can best expose this film? Tks!!

So jelaous ! That landscape at 3:12 !

Looking forward to exposure, comparison videos!

Waiting for 4x5!

I've shot Kent 400 a few times in 35. at least there the grain is very strong. lotta details that I felt should have been visible were pretty crunched. that's not nearly as much of a problem in medium format though.

I'd like to see a video about how you tweak your black and whites in post. Great video.

Beautiful

You have very nice prices for film in UK.

interested to see how the 400 speed film pushes. i've pushed it 1 stop in 35mm before and really enjoyed the results. hopefully at 2 stops it holds up fine

I have been eyeing the Pentax 67 55-100 lens for some time now. I hope to here your thoughts on it soon! 🙂

Why does the shot at 3:38 look so darn good even though the composition is asymmetrical?

Wow! No wonder cheap film looks good when you use perhaps the best zoom lens ever made for medium format. For a period I have borrowed 55-100mm with P6X7MLU and have hardly ever seen such sharp and high-contrast images from any type of film. It hasn't turned out so well when I used my own Zeiss stuff on my Hasselblad. (Larger negative format can't explain the whole difference...)

Hi Kyle, You said that you were able to get your hands on this film 'a couple months back' even though it was only released just recently (medium format). This brings up a couple of questions. Did you get paid for this video? Did you get the film for free (like some other RU-vidrs)? Do you have any kind of affiliation with the manufacturer/brand? I have no doubt that you wanted to just let the world know how good the film really is, but I really think you should let the viewers know what kind of a relationship (or lack thereof) you have with the company. Especially when the product has just been released. Anyway, thanks for the great content. Looking forward to the next one! - Greetings from a snowy place

Great comments on this film... I'm going to have to do a comparison among this, the respective Ilford film (FP4 or HP5) and the respective Delta film... You didn't mention, how flat does the film appear to lay after processing? Curling film is a drag to try to scan.

Foma Pan 100 on 35 has a cruel curl that made it difficult to load into scanner holders. Do these lay as flat as HP5 after they are dry?

Any reason you're shooting with the 67 as opposed to the 67II? Did I miss a video where you switched?

I found this film to be unsatisfying. I guess it’s because I’ve been using Rollei Retro 80s/400s almost exclusively for years so I didn’t get the nice extreme range of tones and contrast I am used to

Tell me, please, which developer developed it?

Is that Rhosydd?

Did I miss the bit where you said how you developed the film? In the scene with the sun if you had just metered the foreground and the sky and told us the difference in stops and how you developed the film it would have been far more informative. If shadows are too thin then you have under exposed it (perhaps the box speed is too high - it usually is). If the highlights have blocked up then you have over developed it. Both are really operator errors. What happens in between these two is the characteristics of the film.

i was here first.

Yeah Foma is finitto

Cheap, less sharp MF film makes no sense at all. It’s makes no sense making cheaper film that competes with the lesser format. Make Film that rivals the upper formats. I can say after looking at your scans that my high end 35mm lens + film (tmax100) + coolscan combo gives me way more sharpness and details than these. Look at 8:30, that’s terrible. No one wants to say it, so I will. We shoot MF so we can get more details than 35mm (I don’t care about the other reasons). Making a cheap, less sharp film for MF is useless. It puts us in the penny wise, pound foolish scenario. Anyone who shoots MF wants the best... It has less latitude, less sharpness and it’s only 2$ max, less than HP5… make it make sense Ilford. So I pick up my MF instead of 35mm cuz I want better results and details right, BUT I want to safe 1$ on a cheaper, less sharp film? 🤣🤣🤣 It’s like buying a 5000$ lens but saving on a plastic filter. This is a business decision to fool people. Kodak did the same with kodak gold 200 in 120. A park of 5 cost 47$, while portra 400 cost 55$. If you really wanted quality, will that 7$ scare you? There is a difference in making cheap, less sharp 35mm film than making the same for MF, cuz 35mm is the smallest format we have and we tend to use it to experiment, point and shoot etc. Also, We don’t have modern high end lenses for MF. Again, this is for those who are penny wise and pound foolish. What we need is a sharper MF film that rivals 4x5, just like the CM iso 20 35mm film that when shot with high end lenses rivals MF and LF in sharpness. Edit: In my opinion, this is bad for film photography. Think about it. Way fewer people shot MF. And people might be thinking, this is the best way to make more people shoot MF, but it’s the opposite. Cuz as long as we have “better" film in 35mm and MF and as long we don’t have newer MF cameras with good optics that don’t cost a house… this is bad. So you finally got that Hasselblad or Mamiya 7 to shoot some cheap, less sharp MF film, to then scan it on an epson😂? Makes no sense. We don’t even have newer scanners for MF film. Please don’t call Epson V a better scanner… it’s terrible. I thought I was having better scans till I compared them to a coolscan or nuritsu etc. If we want to keep film alive, make better film that rivals bigger formats, cuz more people shot 35mm (with newer optics)make better newer scanners, give us newer MF cameras. Just think about it. I finally understand why Leica gave us an expensive 35mm camera. Expensive toys for the lesser (most used) formats is what makes film photography going. Cuz it makes lesser format rival bigger ones. People, ask your self this question; Would you rather shoot pro level film with your 5000$ lens for 35mm or shoot cheap, less sharp MF film in your 5000$ MF camera? Food for thought Thanks for the review btw, showed us a lot what we need to know.