ISO for black and white film?

I'm doing a photography class at school and we use black and white film. I am going away on holiday so the teacher gave me three rolls of black and white film to use while i am away. But the problem is I don't know what ISO it is to set it on my camera.

Could someone please help me by telling me the average ISO for black and white film is to set on my camera?

Thanks in advance.

JUST TO LET YOU KNOW, I WOULD HAVE LOOKED AT THE CANISTER BUT THE ONES WE USE AT SCHOOL ARE REUSABLE ONES AND YOU ROLL THE FILM ONTO THE CANNISTER SO THE ONLY WAY TO FIND OUT THE ISO WOULD BE TO LOOK ON THE BIG ROLL OF FILM WHICH WAS AT SCHOOL.

AND I CONVENIENTLY FORGOT ABOUT IT.

BUT I MANAGED TO GET IN CONTACT WITH MY TEACHER VIA SMS AND YEAH. IT WAS 100 BTW.

THANKS FOR EVERYONES ANSWERS

:)

It should say the ISO on the film roll, and oops on your teacher's behalf if not. I am guessing that it is either 100 ISO or 400 ISO. I would probably set my ISO to 200. Of course, this is just a guess so I would try to get a hold of your teacher or a classmate to find out exactly. Their is no average ISO because all ISO's are pretty different and can affect your exposure. If I had to guess though, I would say he gave you 100 ISO, but if you don't want to risk taking a bunch of awesome photo's and having them not turn out, I would just buy three rolls of film so you can set it to the correct settings and ask your teacher what the ISO is when you see him and then use the film that he gave you after that. Have fun! Hope this helped.

100 or 200 would do fine.

Just shoot at 400 speed, and when you get back to class tell your teacher what you did and why, and if it is necessary he'll give you a quick lesson on push processing. (basically extending the time the film is in the developer.)

Push processing is a common technique, even if you buy a roll of 100 speed film, if you look inside the box they give development times for faster speeds as well. Sometimes I wonder if the only difference between, say, 100 and 200 film is the number printed on the box?

hi,
ISO or ASA are film speeds.mean sensitivity of the film.
both are same.
please read on the can of ur film ,there the ISO or ASA of the film must be mentioned, keep ur cam on the given number, and happily shoot.
if u dint find the ISO number, blindly keep on 100and shoot.don't think much.

There is no such thing as an "average ISO" for film, black & white or color.

In 37 years I can't recall ever seeing a roll of film that didn't have the ASA/ISO printed on the can.

Have a safe, fun holiday.

It will say it on the roll if you camera has the ability to push film then by all means experiment. I like to push B&W because noise is not that much apparent and you can get some cool effects. Say the roll is 400 and I push it to 1600 I tend to shoot the whole roll at 1600 for prosessing reasons,

Have fun

Look at the film cartridge, the ISO should be printed on it. If the film is newer than around 1985, it should be "DX" coded anyway. You should see DX printed on the cartridge as well, if not, look for a patch of black and silver squares, that is the DX code. The camera will read that code using the silver contacts in the film roll slot behind the camera back and determine on its own what the ISO is, and how many exposures it has. I you're using an older, non DX coding camera, than of course it wouldn't set the ISO on it's own, in which case you should still find the ISO printed on the cartridge and enter it yourself. I've never seen a roll of film without an ISO printed on the cartridge and I can't imagine a photography teacher would give you film without a way to know what the ISO is or some "special" film that omits that information, look real hard and you should find it. There is no average ISO for any kind of film. If you're still having a problem, shoot it at 400 (which is a standard multi-purpose fast film speed) and tell the teacher what you shot it at so it can be processed accordingly. Again, take the flim out of its canister, read the cartridge and it should be there.

Take the film out of the little canister and look at the roll itself. It will say it on there.

There is no such thing as an average ISO for black and white film...or any film at all.

If you shoot it incorrectly you could technically push/pull it but don't expect good results.

I assume your film is either ISO 100 or 400, so set your camera for ISO 200. This means you either over-expose or under-expose by one stop, well within the latitude of B & W film. Then just process your film as you normally do. I wouldn't worry about push or pull processing, unless you want to learn about pushing/pulling film.

If you want to be exact, then as others suggested, search the canister for the ISO. It will appear as a pair numbers such as 100/21掳, 400/27掳, etc. The first number is the ISO (or ASA) speed; the second is DIN speed.

As someone else suggested, look for the DX code, a series of black and silver squares on the canister. The code tells you the ISO speed and it's easy to read. Go to http://www.geocities.com/Yosemite/2131/d... for an easy to use DX code table.

We used 100 or 400 in our class.

no sorry i don't even know how to use a proper camra sometimes