I recently bought an N80 film SLR to take photos in a location where digital cameras weren't permitted and I couldn't take my trusty D5100. I also bought a 50 mm f/1.8 to go with it, and some Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400 color film.

The colors photos turned out pretty well (although far grainier/less detailed than I had anticipated). The camera, however, was shipped with a couple rolls of free black and white film (KODAK 400TMY 24).

I gave them both to CVS to have done and returned. The color photos came back as prints a CD, but they sent back just prints negatives for the B&W.

The B&W prints are far, far less sharp than I had anticipated. I don't believe it's the lens - it performs spectacularly on my D5100. So I'm left wondering if it's the camera (is there an optic in there that needs cleaning I should look at?) or if it's the film. Is ISO 400 film naturally just not... sharp? Or does it degrade significantly with age? The B&W film could be 40 years old for all I know.

I'm also wondering the best way to scan the negatives in to post process them and try to salvage some of the photos with Lightroom, because I really like a lot of the shots. I tried quickly using the office scanner at 600 dpi, but this just produces an incredibly dark PDF of the negative. I can go twiddle settings to lighten it up at the source, but was wondering if there's just a better way?

Here are a few example photos. The ones I really care about and exemplify the problem, sadly, are portraits of friends that I'd rather not plaster all over the internet.

Three Photos

Am I expecting too much, returning from the digital world?

On a side note, and prefaced with the last time I had film developed they still did it in-house at Wal-Mart when I was a kid, but I was charged $19.99 per roll to have these developed. Seems like an absolute rip-off?