Review: HP5+ in 35mm
My friend Neal Thorley recently published a review on Ilford’s HP5+ film in the 120 format on his blog (read it here) and I chimed in with a comment about how it’s also fantastic on 35mm. He wanted to link to me, and I realized that for all my complaining that I never have any good content for my blog, I never thought to do a film review. So, here goes.
Ilford’s HP5+ was my first black-and-white film. It’s ISO 400 (which used to be considered “fast” in the old days, but by now is “normal” speed…) and gives a classic tonality that’s similar to Kodak Tri-X. In fact, from what I can tell, HP5+ and Tri-X are very nearly (say, 95%) the same exact film. Some people claim that Tri-X is a little bit better at push development, but I have yet to test the limits of HP5+’s capabilities. I enjoy it so much at 400, and if I’m ever in low light, 1600 gives me no problems. I doubt that it would fail to hold its own against Tri-X though.
There are a lot of reasons I went with Ilford. First, most people start off with Tri-X as their general black-and-white film, and I wanted something just a bit less popular. Second, a 50-foot roll of HP5+ was cheaper than a similar roll of Tri-X. Third and most importantly, Ilford remains a small, purely film-photography company while Kodak is shrinking and has a lot of their fingers in digital pies. Since I started film photography in early 2010, they’ve discontinued Tri-X 320 (the supposedly ‘professional’ version of the film) and have begun to kill off various formats of Plus-X, the ASA 125 sister of Tri-X. While the film market is now only starting to stabilize, I’m fairly sure Tri-X will not be going away any time soon, but I’ve got even more faith in HP5+ sticking around. Besides, since I do both color and black-and-white work, Kodak has plenty of new color films (Ektar 100, Portra 400, Portra 160) that they can use to get my money. I have no problem sticking to Ilford for most of my black-and-white work, only occasionally trying out different film manufacturers for comparison.
One of the things I love about Ilford HP5+ is its versatility. I’ve already discussed its ability to be pushed at least up to ASA 1600, but it also does a great job no matter what developer you chose to throw at it. I started off my photography hearing great things about Kodak HC-110, following it up with the evidently stellar sharpness of Agfa Rodinal. A few months later, I was reading great things about Kodak XTOL—especially if instead of dumping it after development, you re-used the solution with a portion replenished with fresh stock. I’ve tried all these developers with Ilford HP5+, and I’ve gotten great results every time. There doesn’t seem to be a developer for which it’s ill-suited. Furthermore, the only time I’ve noticed results that weren’t sharp, it’s been thanks to my poor focus or unsteady hand. HP5+ has never let me down when it comes to sharp photographs.
Of course, since a picture is worth a thousand words, why not show you some? From my entire collection of photos that were shot on Ilford HP5+, here are a few samples from my 35mm cameras. I’ve tried to mix up the cameras and developers a bit to show what the different developers do to the film. All were scanned by me on my Epson V700 scanner, and please forgive any dust I didn’t bother to clone out.
Camera: Nikon FE2 (w/ 24mm lens)
Developer: Agfa Rodinal, 1+50 dilution
Camera: Konica Auto S2
Developer: Kodak HC-110, dilution B
Camera: Konica Auto S2
Developer: Rodinal 1+100 followed by Kodak HC-110, dilution B [I used two-bath developing to both stand-develop (tame contrast) and push the sensitivity up to ASA 1600. This is the most I've abused the film and you can just start to notice the grain.]
And of course, I saved my favorite sample photo for last…
Camera: Olympus Trip 35
Developer: Kodak XTOL, replenished stock
So, long story short, Ilford HP5+ is my go-to black-and-white film and a perfect alternative to Kodak Tri-X.
Fixing the Olympus Trip 35
After hearing about the awesomeness of the Olympus Trip 35, I wanted to get my hands on one. Unfortunately, as far as I can tell, it was mostly sold in the UK. There, you can apparently still pick up one at a thrift shop or a car boot sale for a pittance. I remain truly jealous of the Brits, since I paid $25 for mine on eBay.
Photos © Michael Raso
And when I got it, it didn’t work. Not like it should have.
The diagnosis: The ASA ring didn’t seem to be functioning (aperture stayed consistent), and it was definitely loose at the faster-speed settings. I’m not sure the aperture blades even opened up fully. Also, you could stick your hand in front of the lens, blocking the solar-powered light meter, and it would still take a picture. The Trip 35 has a built in red plastic flag that will—when it works—rise into your viewfinder and warn you that there is not enough light, and also physically prevent the shutter from firing.
After literally ten seconds on the Google, I found the following guide to Trip 35 disassembly, which is focused on unsticking the aperture blades, which was one of my problems. I read it through before getting to work, which helped me get familiar with the camera before even loosening a single screw:
http://www.thermojetstove.com/Trip35/
However, I have a few things to add after going through three separate repair sessions.
1. If you have a magnet, it’s a good idea to have it handy to pick up dropped pieces. Also, put down a white terrycloth or big sheet of felt material down, so that if you drop, say, a ball bearing, you aren’t going to waste 20 minutes crawling on your hands and knees in the lab looking for the little sucker.
2. Super important! When first disassembling the camera, you should also make note of the orientation of the inner ring that attaches to the outer lens element before you lift off that ring. For example, on mine, the ‘D’ of ‘D. Zuiko’ is at the 12-o’clock position when focused at infinity. If you reattach the inner ring in the wrong position, the focusing ring inside the lens assembly will not grab on to it, and turning the focusing ring will change nothing.
3. Like I said, the red flag didn’t work at all when I first got it, and then after the first repair, it only worked intermittently. I’m pretty sure the problem was that the three wires running from the top of the camera to the bottom were getting caught up on the lever that activates the flag. Some tightening of the wires by relocating the slack to the bottom cavity and fixing those wires in place with some well-placed electrical tape should ensure that those wires don’t get caught up and interfere with the red flag anymore.
The wires I’m talking about. They should be restricted to the right side of this photo. If they get too close to the lens, the red flag may get caught. Image © www.thermojetstove.com
4. I disassembled the rewind crank and rearranged the tiny leaf springs to make the lever “snap” more. Now it is not as loose as it was when I got it. An added perk to the fact that I didn’t know you were just supposed to “unwind” the crank while holding the winding key in place in order to unscrew it.
5. Make sure the viewfinder and the lens elements are extra-clean before putting everything back together again. I had to do a third “repair” just to get a bit of graphite dust off the middle lens element.
Anyway, thanks to the original instructions’ advice about the red mark (I used a dot of White-Out, which shows up better on black), I was fairly sure that by the final assembly stage, I was going to have good focus. But based on the amount that the focus ring turns as you adjust focus, you’ve got to be spot-on with the position of that lens when you reassemble it. So, I shot one more test roll.
Obviously, I wanted a shallow depth of field, so I shot a roll of FP4+ at ASA 100. I guess I could have gone slower, but I could pick up a 12-exposure roll cheaply at my local shop. I basically measured out the distances (1m, 1.5m, and 3m) from a brick wall, and made sure that I could pick up the bricks’ texture. I placed the camera on the ground and used a cable release. I also used up some shots of various things in the distance to see if they were in focus when I was focused on infinity. Results are below:
Focus @ 1m
Focus @ 1.5m
Focus @ 3m
Those seem pretty good, though it would be nice to know what my aperture was. Now for the “infinity” shots, which may be compromised due to the fact that I didn’t have a tripod on me:
A full 35mm frame
A 1:1 crop from a scan at 3200 dpi.
Another 1:1 crop from a scan at 3200 dpi.
Hopefully I’ve got it right! Looking forward to taking some real pictures with this camera now.
Caffenol – Developing Film in Coffee
Want to develop film in common household items? well, here’s a good recipe for a developer:
Caffenol C-M
1. Measure out 500mL water.
2. Dissolve in 27g of washing soda (NOT baking soda)
3. Dissolve in 8g of Vitamin C powder (check a health food store)
4. Dissolve in 20g instant coffee (the cheaper the better)
Let sit for a few minutes to let the bubbles settle, but use the developer within the hour. Generally, 15 minutes of development with 10 seconds agitation per minute is a recommended starting point. For more details, you can check out Reinhold’s Caffenol Blog (caffenol.blogspot.com) but it’s so simple, I just wanted to post the recipe so you can try it out.
Also, of course, some results of my own on Ilford Delta 100:
How I Screwed Up and How I Fixed It
I screwed up my first roll of B&W film since I started developing. And that’s been almost a year, so at least I had a good streak going.
So what happened? I bought some new Rokunar reels. I felt like more plastic reels were in order, since they need to dry completely before you can reuse them, and you never can tell when I’m going to want to do a marathon developing day. OK, so that’s unlikely, given how much I love developing. Odds are that sensitized but unprocessed film rolls aren’t going to stay around for very long. But maybe someone will want me to shoot an event or wedding someday, and I’ll have to plow through several rolls of film. Anyway… for whatever reason, I wanted more reels. Well, just my luck that my camera shop had some Rokunar reels in stock. These are different than the Patersons that I have, but they have the distinct advantage of having big thumb rests or tabs on one part of the reel, meaning it’s easier to find out the point where you start loading the reel by touch.
So, I loaded my Kodak Plus-X Pan in the reel, put the reel in the tank, and started developing. Well, once I was done with the processing, I got shots like this:
What caused this? My educated guess, though I’ll never be 100% certain, is that the reel wasn’t at the very bottom of the tank. Instead, it must have gotten lifted up so that one edge (the dark one) progressively got more and more elevated out of the developer. This could be caused by the rotating motion of the agitation wand that I use in the Paterson tank. The Paterson tanks have a tighter grip on the center post, so they don’t slide up and down very easily.
So, the most logical thing to do would be to always use two reels so that there’s no room to slide. This is absurd, because if I had two different films, I’d need to use all four of my reels – two for developing film, and two “spacer” reels. And then, my purchase is nullified.
So instead, I noticed that the diameter of a plastic 35mm film canister is slightly larger than the diameter of the Paterson center post, and a bit taller than the height of a plastic reel set to accept 35mm film. It makes sense, right? It’s got to be at least as tall as the film cartridge, which is of course wider than the film. So, I measured how much I would have to cut off the end, and I made a hollow cylinder. Once the reel is loaded on the center post, this spacer goes on top so that the reel stays on the bottom, in the 300 mL of chemicals. I may make a tiny ring for 120, but I think the weight should help hold it down.
Future crises averted!
Redscale!
There’s a fairly popular cult movement in film photography known as Redscale. I listen to the Film Photography Podcast religiously, and redscale film was discussed very early on – in episode one, actually – more than a year ago. (See John Milleker’s photo that sparked the discussion.) I originally thought the photos I saw were far too red, and wondered why anyone would want to shoot it. So I put it on my personal “back burner” of photography projects.
So what am I talking about? Basically, color negative film is loaded into the canister backwards – though to be fair, I suppose it could be done with 120 or sheet film too. This means that rather than sensitizing the light-sensitive emulsion directly, light must pass through the orange mask of the acetate base to reach the emuslion. This essentially gives you a severe red/orange filter for free. Theoretically, you could have a 100′ reel of color negative film that you purposefully wind backwards, but I’ve never seen any long spools for sale. Instead, there are a number of internet tutorials on how to redscale your film by transferring the film from one 35mm canister to another.
See the step-by-step tutorials I found here and here. Personally, I followed the steps in the first tutorial. Since I originally heard about the technique, I also learned that Lomography now produces pre-redscaled film for sale. But I didn’t like the idea of paying Lomography prices and not knowing what was going into the rolls.
So why did I finally visit redscale? Because as I saw more and more redscale photos, I saw some shades of green and blue. They were actually colorful! The tutorials above both recommend exposing the film one stop more than you the film’s original rating to compensate for the light lost to the acetate layer. But because negative film has such a mammoth exposure latitude, you can still get plenty of detail when you overexpose. Overexposure on correctly-loaded C-41 film is a common practice for wedding or portrait photographers to smooth skin tones. It’s difficult to do this with slide film and impossible to do with digital. I noticed that most images that I disliked had very rich blacks and fairly dense highlights. So, I thought that maybe a good solution would be to overexpose.
Then, I saw this comparison of exposure settings for redscale film. It is a test of redscaled Fuji Superia 400 rated at 100. Right off the bat, the film is given two stops of exposure compensation rather than the one stop as recommended in the tutorials above. In addition, it seemed like the more muted tonality I was going for is a result of further overexposure by a stop or two. So, I followed the tutorial with some Fuji Superia X-Tra 400 that I picked up at Wal-mart. The original film was rated at ISO 400, and I rated it at ISO 50 – a full three stops of compensation.
I shot two of my three rolls of film at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in Washington, DC this past weekend. When I came back, I took the film to CVS for a quick development ($4.35 total, I think it was). When I got my negatives back, though, I noticed that some of the felt must have come off and dirtied the film. So, my scans have a bit of white spots. Still, they look pretty awesome, I think. Note: these are straight scans from the EPSONscan software with just a little bit of color temperature adjustment in Adobe Lightroom.
watching the band
Taken in Santa Fe, NM and Overexposed to ASA 100
Camera: Canon AE-1
Film: Kodak Portra 160VC
st. francis
This photograph was probably my favorite from Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi in front of the Cathedral Basilica of (you guessed it) Saint Francis of Assisi.
“Santa Fe” translates to “Holy Faith” in Spanish and Portuguese. I am not a religious person anymore, but religion does produce some fantastic art and architecture.
Film: Tri-X 400 (I think)
Dev: Rodinal (I think)
Camera: Canon AE-1
birds from a parking lot
Birds on cross-processed Fuji Velvia. I didn’t tweak the colors at all.
Camera: Canon A2, 50mm
Film: Fuji Velvia 100F
Chem: C-41 (Cross-process)
Film courtesy the Film Photography Podcast, hosted by Michael Raso (flickr user: michaelraso)
You can check out the podcast at:
www.FilmPhotographyPodcast.com
good luck
A piece of paper lying next to the sidewalk.
Camera: Canon A2, 50mm
Film: Fuji Velvia 100F
Chem: C-41 (Cross-process)
Film courtesy the Film Photography Podcast, hosted by Michael Raso (flickr user: michaelraso)
You can check out the podcast at:
www.FilmPhotographyPodcast.com
dinner conversations
Jason and Ryan at the dinner table
Camera: Canon A2 35mm
Film: Ilford HP5+ pushed to 800 ASA
Chem: HC-110 Dilution B
payphone
I just like the colors that the stickers add.
Camera: Canon A2 35mm
Film: Kodak Ektachrome Elite II, ASA 200, Cross-processed.
Chem: Unicolor Home C-41 development kit
conduit redux
taken on calder way in state college, pa.
cross-processed kodak elite chrome in my new canon a2. all photos were merely cropped and/or resized. developed and scanned by the local photo lab. i’m not really sure I like how they scanned the roll. Anyway, I just purchased an epson v700 scanner and should have quite a fun time figuring it out for my next series of film shots.
