This is a great film that has a very nostalgic and vintage feel. This is a good all-rounder film that offers decent quality at an affordable price. Photos can be a little grainy but look good enough for the price. And, it's the cheapest film you can buy right now*. However, please bare in mind that as a true Black and White film it takes much longer to develop and is quite costly to do so. For example, Max Spielmann (a high street lab found within Tesco Stores) on average takes 2-3 weeks to develop this film at the cost of £12 per roll. Gulabi Lab based in Glasgow develops this film at the cost of £13 per roll but you also have to spend about £3 to send the film to them with Evri or Royal Mail. They do develop it much faster, within a few days, however. Analogue Wonderlab charge £16.

Therefore, while this film may seem affordable at face value, when accounting for development costs it actually does not work out to be the cheapest film you can shoot. Currently, that crown goes to Ilford XP2 Super.

*Kentmere 400 costs £4.75 - £6.19 per roll and £12 - £16 to develop and scan. (£16.75 - £22.19)
Ilford XP2 Super costs £8 - £10 per roll and £8 - £11 to develop. (£16 - £21)

Ilford XP2 can also be developed with c41 chemicals, making turnaround extremely fast (hours to days rather than weeks). So that's also something to bare in mind.

Review written on the 23rd of April, 2024. Prices may have changed since then.

Incredible quality for the cheap price

My experience with this film includes developing at home and printing in the darkroom. The accompanying image is a photograph of a hand made darkroom print made from this film. I have not tried scanning Kentmere 400.

In my opinion Kentmere 400 produces images with good mid-tone separation and highlights that are easy to print. In my testing the film performs better when metered at EI 200. This might be down to my equipment and each user should make their own tests.

A great benefit of this film is that the negatives dry and stay flat which makes handling in the darkroom easier, especially when making contact prints.

I prefer Kentmere 400 to Ilford HP5 400 for most applications because of the additional contrast and separation in the mid-tones. It is possible, of course, to increase the contrast of HP5 by extending the development time but with a contrasty scene this may lead to denser highlights on the negative which might be more difficult to print. I find Kentmere 400 gives me more contrast and also provides highlights that are easy to print.

The grain of Kentmere 400 appears to me to be slightly larger than HP5 but I don't think there is much difference.

The print shown here was made from Kentmere 400 developed in Ilford DD-X for Ilford's recommended development time and it was printed on Ilford Multigrade RC DeLuxe (pearl) at Grade 4.

Good film for beginners , can't find a better film for the price! Just a perfect amount of contract , works well for landscapes.

Film appears to be good quality for the price, especially as this was my first time shooting 35mm film. Bought this film to test a camera and to see if I would enjoy film photography.

I really enjoyed shooting this film and seeing the results as I wasn't expecting much but it definitely exceeded my expectations, also analogue wonderland's services was very easy to use, professional and friendly.
I would definitely continue to use this film for all of my budget black and white photography.