Ilford HP5 (35mm, 400 iso) user-review
written by strangerous
on October 30th, 2008
, 3 comments
(1 vote)
Nice contrast and grain, definitely one of my new favorites!
This is a great faster speed film with good contrast and smaller grain. I usually like to work with Kodak Plus-X 125; it is low speed, moderate contrast, very small grain, very nice to print with… so when i needed a faster film for long exposure i was tempted to go to Kodak Tri-X 400. Instead i took a chance with the Ilford because i had a few rolls and I enjoyed printing on Ilford paper- I figured the film would be just as nice.
I was pleasantly surprised with Ilford’s nice contrast and not so big grain! I picked up a lot of nice details with this film. as for developing, i had to fix for five extra minutes (10 minutes total) than i would have with the plus-x or tri-x and it was not responding to the photo-flo well (very streaky and water marks everywhere)! i ended up re-washing the negs and re-doing the photo-flo. It was still a little streaky even after that but was better than the first time. i ended up wiping it with a (lintless) cloth when it was in the negative carrier before printing.
Over all, it was pretty easy to develop (compared to Kodak T-max) and i should have no problems the second time around. Definitely a joy to work with, i’ll be using this again!
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