Tom DePuy wrote:
My wife asked me what is the best film ever in my opinion?
Kodachrome 200 I said.
I would have responded, "Best film for what use?"
I never thought there was just one.
> I used Kodak Tri-X most often when growing up (age 13 to 20)
> I used Ilford HP5 and HP5 Plus instead of Tri-X after that.
> I used Kodachrome 64 for 90% of my personal slides. The rest were Ektachromes and Fujichromes.
> I used several different Ektachromes for work slides when producing AV shows:
Ektachrome 50 Tungsten on the copy stand
Ektachrome 64 Daylight and Ektachrome 400 Daylight for general multi-image slide photography
Ektachrome 5071 Duplicating Film for continuous light duplicating setups (those with enlarger color heads)
Ektachrome SO-366 (Special Order) Duplicating Film for my Bowens Illumitran (with electronic flash)
> I used Kodalith 6556 (ASA 6 ultra-high contrast black-and-white lithographic "line" film) for title slides and special effects production.
> At the lab I worked for in the early 1990s, we used Kodak Vericolor Internegative Film to make copy composites of elementary school class portraits. It yielded great results, but it was THE most finicky film I ever used. We had a 14' overhead rail horizontal graphic arts camera with 60"x40" copy board and 20"x24" vacuum film back. We bought the film in master rolls and slit/sheeted it to 5x7, 6x8, 8x10, and 11x14 sheets. We had a Refrema dip-and-dunk processor to soup the stuff. When you make a quarter million class composite prints a year, you don't mess around.
> We used Kodak Vericolor II, then Vericolor III, then Portra 160 NC Professional Color Negative Film for school portraits. It came in 135, 120, and 220 size rolls, and unperforated 35mm, 46mm, and 70mm 100-foot rolls. In peak season, we used over 10,000 — 100' rolls of 46mm, plus lots of 35mm perforated (size 135 cartridges) and 120/220 roll film.
So I always have to qualify the question with, "Best film for what use?" You need more than one if you do highly specialized work.