[batwister]

I don't want to be a photography forum troll but I am going to say something that I hate hearing on these forums... My advice is to try a roll of Portra, Ektar, and a Fuji offering. I do a lot of B&W stuff and trying out a different developer involves mixing up a bunch of chemicals and if you don't like it you are stuck. There are also tons of B&W films out there and it would be too expensive and time consuming to try each one out in it's preferred developer.

If you are shooting medium format C-41 experimenting should be relatively inexpensive and straight forward. You only have maybe 3 or 4 emulsions to try out and they are all developed the same way. I use Walmart's send out service for less than 90 cents a roll of 120.

The difficulty in making a choice comes about when actually comparing results through printing/scanning - I'm not sure how else you would compare colour neg - on a light box?

Getting good workable scans of Ektar for instance might be difficult with 'efficiency oriented' labs, unless you're opting for a more costly, higher res custom service. This is my conundrum with shooting colour. I don't have my own scanner and can't afford the decent (100MB+) scanning services from my lab at the moment - which is the only way to substantiate the quality advantage of shooting colour film over digital, unless, you make optical prints. So the question of making a choice between films comes down to the OP's preferred output and his level of scrutiny of the results. Testing and comparing could be more technically arduous than you make out. If it's just a case of using a 'process + scan to CD' service, to be honest, it all comes out the same. In which case, shoot whatever and have a play around. But we are talking about 'pro' films. Doesn't that suggest he wants 'pro' results?

This is where the 'cost-results' issue of choosing traditional over digital becomes controversial - it's something you don't account for when impulse buying MF gear on eBay for pennies. Yeah, you might have those 60MP single use sensors stored away, but will they ever become high quality images. For me the answer is - not in the foreseeable future. I'm basically shooting colour film for posterity.

Maybe he could chip in here.