Kodak's high-speed B&W stock (250 ASA) with distinctive grain — ideal for moody, underlit scenes. Last classic monochrome cinema film still in production.
If you wanted to shoot on black and white film in the late 2010s, you couldn't avoid Double X—Kodak had made it the last real B&W roll film option before production ceased in 2018. 250 ASA, strong grain, extremely long archival shelf life. It was the go-to for documentarians, for anyone who consciously wanted to fight against digital smoothness.
The grain isn't accidental—it's intentional. At 250 ASA, you work in low-light situations that digital cameras would only handle with terrible noise. Double X instead offers you this warm, analog grain that appears atmospheric rather than technically flawed. You notice it on set immediately: by candlelight, in tight interiors, at night—the film grain makes it believable, not visible. That's the crucial difference from digital noise.
Practically, this means you underexpose with ND filters or aperture, working with longer exposure times. Development was also critical—not every lab was still familiar with it. You have to clarify with your chemists if they still do pull and push processing, how they handle retention. A developed roll of Double X lasted for decades—that was enormously important for archival projects.
After 2018, many switched to Fujifilm Neopan or old stock, but Double X had a consistency that was hard to replace. It wasn't high-contrast like some black and white films, not extremely fine-grained like others—it was simply craft-wise solid, predictable, robust. For long-term projects, for archival ambitions, it was gold. Today, some stock is still in circulation, but it's expensive and storage becomes a risk. Anyone still working with Double X either has old rolls in the fridge or has long since switched to digital black-and-white workflows with film simulation—which works, but isn't the same.