Original Ilford HP5
- Details
- Published on Monday, 17 October 2011 11:28
- Written by Neal
Anyone who follows me on any of the usual places such as Flickr or Google+ will know that I've been lucky enough to have been given lots of film and processing equipment from a man who is decommissioning his fathers darkroom. Some of the stock is well expired, some of it unusable and some of it should be as new.
Stoked with this recent acquisition I've set out to test some of the very old and expired film. First cab off the rank is some original Ilford HP5. This stuff expired in 1992 and I have quite a few rolls here. The first thing I noticed was just how tightly rolled this film was, seems that years of being rolled up on a spool has taken it's toll. It loaded quite fine though in the Mamiya C330.
I went out to a favourite area of mine to grab some shots with it. At first I ran some + and - Exposure tests so I can judge just how badly it's aged and how much to compensate by. Wow was I blown away! upon developing this film I noticed that the best exposed frame was at box speed (400iso) the rest of the roll was pointed at various subjects and you can see below just how well this film has aged and that it's still capable of some beautiful results.
There is a slightly noticable increase in visible grain here, I could counteract this by choosing a different agitation method or using stand development. Overall I am very happy with how this has turned out. I have some other films to test next so keep your eye out for some Tri-X expired in 1985 and some very old Kodak Technical Pan film. Should be a blast!
River Swamp - Shot on HP5 Original - Box speed - Developed in D76 1:1
