The best thing you can do for your black and white photography is to learn the Zone System inside and out. If you can get into it and completely understand what Ansel is talking about, you can get the most out of ANY film you choose. And the best part is, It works for digital too......it's just applied a little differently. Oh yeah, don't forget about different developers and development times/temp. These choices make a HUGE, HUGE difference as far as grain and contrast. My preferred choices are: T-MAX 100 and 400(sheet film only) Ilford FP4+ 125 (35mm bw) T-Max 3200 (great for indoor/ stage lighting ie. concerts) Developer of choice is always Kodak HC-110. It has a lot of control to it. Several different CHARTED dilutions for different films/grain/contrast. I Highly reccomend this stuff. D-76 aint bad either.