Why I will move to ONE film...

I am an eclectic shooter in every sense of the word.  I like shooting multiple cameras, I like digital, film and would LOVE to learn glass plate photography, I shoot multiple genres including portraits, architecture, landscape and street.  This being said, I have recently decided to shoot only one B&W film.  

This has nothing to do with having found the 'perfect' film, but has allot to do with versatility.  Up until now, my 35mm go-to film has been Ilford's HP5+ and Fomapan 100.  I liked this combination as it gave me an ISO 100 film, for fine grain work and a high speed film that could be pushed from ISO 400 to 3200!  With these two films I had fine grain all the way to the low light stuff!

The two drawbacks were that I had to keep two films in stock and I have to process both films differently.  If I could consolidate to one film type, I could standardize my development, reducing changes for error and simplifying my life.  But I needed a slower film for some of my work and HP5+ at 400 just was not slow enough.

Then I started pulling HP5+ to an Exposure Index of 200.  The first few attempts were not really noteworthy and I dropped it.  Then I tried exposing at 200 but developing at the recommended timings (as if I had exposed at 400).  This came VERY close to what I wanted.  When I reduced the time by 10% I found a result I fell in love with!  

The one stop difference in speed is not worth keeping both Foma and HP5+ so I have consolidated my film to Ilford.  I still have a 100ft bulk roll of Foma100 film that I will enjoy shooting.  I love this film, it is inexpensive, fine grained and easy to work with.  It is a bit thiner than HP5+ making it more likely to curl but this is easily fixed with a heavy book.  

So for my B&W 35mm work I will be purchasing HP5+ in bulk exclusively.  For my other formats I buy what I find.  While I love HP5+ in medium format there are times it is too expensive or difficult to find.  So I will shoot whatever I can find.  Same for my 4x5.