Black and white has been interesting to me for years, but I haven’t been shooting it much since I started with film again. I’ve used some HP5+, and one roll of Delta 50 that I pretty much universally underexposed, and that’s it for true B&W. I also shot some of the XP2 that you develop in C41, and I like it, but that was 6 months ago. So I grabbed a few rolls each of some film stock that interests me and one of my cameras will be loaded with B&W all the time until I have tried them all.
The stocks I chose were Delta 50, Delta 100, FP4+ 125, and XP2 Super all from Ilford, and Acros from Fuji. Maybe I have an HP5 roll here, too, I would have to look in the refrigerator to see. I also have a bunch of Delta 3200 and XP2 in 120, which was a gift from the man I bought my GX680 from. I’ll try to get to now that I have a third back for the 680s and can keep B&W loaded and still have a back for slides and negatives. I’d really like to convince some people to sit for portraits with the 120, and I learned that Delta is actually native a lot slower than 3200 (800 speed? I’d have to look) so I could probably get some with acceptable grain even doing something stupid like street photography with 10 lbs of medium format camera hanging from my neck. I might haul that around the village and ask people to let me take portraits as a lark. But for now it’s 135.
You might remember the first roll, which was was FP4 in my F6. I posted some samples here a couple weeks back. It’s a usable film, and I even think this one was a genuine winner:
I did the same with the current roll of FP4, just taking shots of random subjects. I was using the F3 this time, which has a center weighted meter instead of a matrix like the F6. I don’t know if I’ve bonded with it yet, though it is a great camera. I definitely underexposed the portrait I shot not realizing it was 80% center weight. I need to remember it’s like the middle setting on the F6 switch when I’m searching for shadows. Maybe narrower, even, as the FM3a is 60% CW. The F3 is almost a spot by comparison.
I got some good shots, and I didn’t always shoot when the light was great because, frankly, I was getting impatient to burn the roll and get it processed. I didn’t bother worrying about the subject matter either, I just wanted to shoot something.
I’ll say this, FP4 is good film. I like it, It’s more contrasty than I expected, and it can be super sharp. I’m really impressed with the details I pulled out, even in tougher light. I will be happy to shoot this in bright light in the future, and I might even do some DR5 processing and make slides.
Here’s a dump of some of the roll. Random subjects. Random lighting. Even a bunch of balloons, one of each color, like I’d planned a test. I got lucky on that one. Behold!
