Kodak HC-110 and Ilford HP5+

I was able to line up a shoot with a good friend of mine from work last week. The weather forecast was looking pretty decent in terms of lighting, and pretty bad in terms of model comfort—cloudy with a chance of rain/snow. I figured it would be a great chance to test out something a little faster than the 100 ISO films I'm hardwired to gravitate towards.

Enter Ilford HP5+. Ilford HP5+ is not a film I have shot much of. I don't like using 400 ISO even when I have to, since as we all know I'm a total grain nazi. The less the better as far as I'm concerned. Furthermore, I read up on the stuff before buying a roll. The advantages I found listed for this in almost every review were things like "pushes really well," "very forgiving of exposure error," "easy to use," "classic journalistic look," etc. etc. Many people reported that HP5+ had this "look" that no other film could achieve, but they all had a difficult time explaining exactly what they meant there. None of these advantages were anything I'm real concerned with, with the possible exception of push-processing, so I wasn't exactly expecting anything spectacular out of the film itself. That isn't to say I wasn't going to try my hardest to make some art out of it.

We went up a nearby canyon into some mountains shortly after sunrise. Not far in, there's a nice spot where you can pull over and check out a sort of clearing area that has a stream running through it, a few fallen trees, rocks, etc. etc. It's a good place to do some nature-themed portraits.

It was cold and snowing just a little bit, but the wind was pretty well-behaved, and the light was very good with a dark, overcast feel to it. We burned through the roll (10 frames) and called it good before risking any extremities to frostbite. Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration. It wasn't THAT cold.

With that feeling of knowing there was some great stuff waiting to look at from the shoot, we made our way back to my house. My friend is actually a photographer as well, and humored me in helping me develop the roll right away. I'm not very good at reading negatives yet, but I could at least tell that there was nothing horribly wrong with the exposures or anything when we hung it up to dry.

Just about as soon as it was dry, I scanned the negatives. Here's the verdict:

 

The tones here are pretty good. All the negatives seemed a little bit flat and lacking in contrast to me. I know there are ways to get better contrast using different lighting, development techniques, etc. But this particular photo is already "finished" in Lightroom after scanning, and I still feel like I could do with more contrast if it was applied carefully.

 

As far as sharpness and grain, it's about as expected. Not lacking in sharpness, per say, just not competing with PanF+ or Delta 100. That's okay, I wasn't expecting it to. The grain is about what you would expect from a "traditional" (non T-grain) 400 speed film. It's really not terribly bad, actually, especially in medium format. But I suspect Delta 400 will give me better results here.

 

This negative is untouched after scanning, except for cropping off the borders of the negative. You can see what I mean a little more when I talk about "flat" tones. It's like everything is pushing as hard as it can to land in Zone 5.

The grain is a touch more noticeable in lighter portions of the frame.

Anyway, I've been pretty hard on this film. There's nothing specific that I really dislike about it, it just doesn't get me excited about anything. It's pretty much just average film in every way. I know there are tons of people who love it. I'm just not feeling it. I may do some further tests with different ISOs and developers, but it's not high on my priority list.

I did, however, REALLY like having a 400 ISO film for a day when it's not so bright outside. This has inspired me to want to try Delta 400, as well as try pushing Delta 100 to 200 or 400, or even pull Delta 400 down to 200 or so. So much testing, not enough time!

Kodak HC-110 and Delta 100 (in medium format)

I've been such a fan of Delta 100 and HC-110 in 35mm format that I of course wanted to shoot it in medium format as well to see how it did.

As I expected (and hoped), the combo gets even better. It seems like the tonal variation is always better in medium format, and that holds true with this combination of film/developer as well. In open shade at least, the tones of Delta 100 are awesome for what I want out of many of my portraits, both in 35mm and 6x7.

100 ISO is a tad slow to shoot on darkly overcast days though when the wind is really blowing, like it was on this shoot. I will be testing some films rated at higher ISOs in the future so I can confidently overcome this problem and get the shutter speeds I need even when conditions are darker than usual.

I've heard that Delta 100 pushes pretty well. I'll definitely give Delta 400 a try, and I have a roll of HP5+ in medium format that I'd like to try as well. More tests with this combo coming in the future. I may, for the sake of completeness, do some tests with Rodinal and Delta in medium format sometime in the future, but I'm much more concerned about nailing down my process with HC-110 and Delta at the moment as it's a definite winning combo.

Here are the pictures.

 

As I mentioned, you can see that the tonality here rocks. Deep, rich blacks, great midtones, and as I made a special effort to avoid shots that might lead to blocked-up highlights, we're safe here on that front.

 I'm a big fan of the way the film renders lighter midtones like the pavement the model is sitting on.

 The 100% crop reveals that there is grain on the film. But very, very little. A fantastic combo for retaining detail without getting golf-ball sized grain.

 Once again, not much to say about the grain except that it's really really fine.

 

For the time being, HC-110 and Delta 100 is my go-to for cloudy days or other open shade portrait shoots. I love it in 35mm and in 120. I'll use PanF when I'm worried about too much contrast, especially issues with highlights blowing out. Rodinal can control highlights well, but I don't like what it does to Delta's grain, at least in 35mm. More tests to follow in the future. I want to test PanF and HC-110 in medium format sometime in the near future to see what I can get.

Kodak HC-110 and Ilford FP4+

A while ago, I found a few 35mm bulk loaders of my Dad's in the darkroom. One of them had a bunch of PanF+ in it (which has all been used up now, unfortunately), and one of them had a bunch of Ilford FP4+ in it. I still haven't gotten to the end of the FP4+.

I figured since I'm running all these tests, I might as well throw FP4+ into the mix. I decided to start with HC-110 since I'm more familiar with that developer.

FP4+ is a film designed to be fine-grained and well-toned. In my book, it accomplishes both of these goals when developed in HC-110. I shot and developed at its published ISO of 125, and am happy with the results. The tones look great, even on 35mm film. FP4+ isn't generally considered a portrait film, but with the way it looks here, I'll definitely try running some portraits through it as it fits what I have in mind for many of the film portraits I do.

I also have yet to try it out with Rodinal, but it's on my to-do list. I'll eventually try it out in many different developers. I have a bag of Xtol, and there's a bag of D76 calling my name at the camera store. I also know for a fact that there are some old Ilford developers laying around, buried in the darkroom somewhere.

Here are the images:

As you can see, the sharpness is good, and the tones are astoundingly good. This is one of the few frames that had a good exposure from the roll. I was doing some more testing on an iPod app I downloaded that was supposed to be a light meter. It's no good, unfortunately. But this frame came out okay.

The grain is definitely there. It's not Delta 100. But it's fine, and for nature subjects, I feel that this is one of the few times the grain can even add something to the shot. That is, of course, just my opinion.

 After scanning, I had a little bit of rescue to do on this severely overexposed frame. I didn't get fancy, I just dragged the midtones down in Photoshop since that's what seemed to suffer the most in the overexposure. Unfortunately, that accentuated the grain, which is quite visible in the 100% crop. Still, the tones look really great here.

This grain is more than I expect to get if I expose and develop properly in the future.

I think shooting portraits on this stuff at 35mm might be pushing it on the grain for me. I'll probably still give it a shot to see how I like it. But I can definitely see myself using 120 rolls of this stuff for portraits. When I get my hands on some, I'll be sure to try it out.

Adox Adonal (Rodinal) and Ilford Delta 100

As I mentioned, I've been interested in trying out Rodinal for awhile now. From what I hear, it's a good developer to use for fine-grained films to get better sharpness at the cost of having more noticeable grain. I guess the idea is that if you have fine enough grain to start with, you can afford to spend a little of it on sharpness.

Well I had some 35mm Delta 100 on hand (I try to keep that stuff on hand since I like it so much), and decided it would be the first victim today. I took it out to a big commercial garden near my home and burned through it pretty quick. I wasn't aiming at creating art since the sun was basically right overhead and there wasn't tons of shade. I just wanted to have a roll to soup in Rodinal when I got back.

I guess a little explanation of the title of this post is in order. Rodinal is a super old developer that they've been using since like the Civil War or something. For a really long time, the company Agfa (now belly-up, unfortunately) was making it and selling it. Then they went out of business, things got complicated legally, and basically other people started making stuff that was virtually the same thing. You can now get it under a few different names if you look. As near as I can tell, the two most popular are Adox Adonal (claims to be the exact formula that Agfa used for Rodinal), and something called R09 One-Shot. I just went with Adonal. No real reason why.

Anyway, I got home and unfortunately had to go to work before I could soup the roll. While at work, during my downtime, I did some research on the effects of different dilutions, as well as checking out some of the results other people were getting with this combo on FilmDev. Honestly, I wasn't super impressed with what I saw on FilmDev for this combo. In the process I learned a few things.

a) Apparently higher dilutions give higher contrast but less shadow detail, and more noticeable grain.
b) With Rodinal, agitation is perhaps more influential than with any other developer. More agitation = less grain, less sharpness, more contrast, and more risk of blowing out highlights. Less agitation, even to the point of stand or semi-stand developing (recommended by lots of people) will control highlights really well and separate out the tonality within the denser parts of the negative.
c) Rodinal tends to lower effective film speed in high dilutions.

After reading all this, I settled on starting things off at 1:50 dilution, a good middle ground. I got my developing time from The Massive Dev Chart and got down to business.

Here I agitated a lot less than I do with HC-110. With HC-110, I pretty much always give it 30 seconds of agitation at the beginning, and then 5 seconds for every 30 seconds of developing time throughout. After reading what I did about Rodinal though, and especially considering my negatives were already doomed to be really contrasty because of the light I was shooting in, I did 30 seconds of agitation at the beginning, and then 5 seconds for every 2 minutes after that.

And the results are in.

The whole "highlight controlling" thing is no myth.This was smack in the middle of the sun, literally about noon. Those flowers were light yellow or white, if I remember correctly. DEFINITELY kept the contrast down here.

The additional grain is also no myth. From what I saw on FilmDev, and what I read, Rodinal doesn't play nicely with Delta's grain. This is nowhere near as smooth and silky as I'm used to Delta 100 being. I don't see any obvious huge jump in sharpness between HC-110 and Rodinal with this film until I zoom into 100%, where it becomes a little more evident. But I was frankly satisfied with the sharpness on Delta 100 + HC-110. It's not worth the extra grain to me.

I had also read that using high dilutions of Rodinal (like 1:50 rather than 1:25) can rob you of film speed, which as I understand it, effectively means you lose exposure. I wonder if giving this more time in the soup would have given me better exposures here. I also wonder if it was just error at time of shooting though, because a) 14 minutes in the developer is nothing to sneeze at, and b) I was not metering; just shooting at Sunny 16 and guesstimating exposures whenever I needed to deviate. So that was probably stupid to leave so many variables running wild in the testing. Regardless, this seems dark to me, and this is one of the better samples from the group.

The top shot looks okay, but the bottom one and the majority of the shots I didn't upload were lacking in contrast. This is odd, since apparently higher dilutions should give higher contrast.

So yeah. I'm feeling the grain isn't really what I'm looking for here. I want to revisit this pairing since I obviously haven't done extensive testing yet. But I think the next test I do with this film and developer will be with 6x7 format, souped at 1:25 dilution, and perhaps agitated a bit more. The larger format should help with the graininess, the dilution should also help with the graininess, and the extra agitation should give me more contrast. Just need to be sure to shoot in open shade, which is what I'm inclined to do with Delta 100 anyway, based off my previous tests.

I'll give the combo points for REALLY controlling the highlights in what could otherwise have been completely unusable images though. I would guess that has more to do with Rodinal + anything than it does with Rodinal + Delta specifically.

But yeah. Unless something goes miraculously well in my medium format tests with this combo, I probably won't be souping 35mm Delta 100 in Rodinal anymore. Maybe it will give me better results with a classic grain film like FP4 or PanF rather than a T-grain (or Ilford equivalent) like Delta though. Long story short, I still have lots of testing to do to find out where Rodinal fits in my arsenal.

Kodak Portra 400 and... whatever C-41 stuff my lab uses

I did a shoot about a month ago with a good friend. I shot half of it on PanF+ in 120 format, and also burned through a test roll of Kodak Portra 400 (the new stuff) to see how I liked it.

I don't develop my own C-41, but as I understand it, there's not anywhere near as much room for creative processing with color negative film as there is with B&W film, so I'm not too worried about it. From what I read, C-41 processing is very consistent between labs.

The new Portra comes in ISO 160, 400, and (rumor has it) 800. I liked the stuff I was seeing online, so I figured I'd try it out.

Unfortunately, I hit a wall when I scanned the negatives after I got them back from the lab. They were about 3 stops underexposed on my monitor. Any attempts to brighten them resulted in really muddy-looking images with lots of noise and emphasized grain. Kodak claims Portra 400 to be the finest-grain 400 speed color negative film ever, and it is designed specifically with scanning in mind, though optical prints can be made from it. So I was pretty disappointed, and basically filed the film away to sit for a while. I was convinced I had somehow messed up the exposure during shooting, though I couldn't figure out how I might have made such a mistake... my light meter was set correctly and my camera's shutter was calibrated well enough to give me accurate exposures when I used it for B&W film.

I finally brought the stuff into work (I work at a camera store that is also a photo and print lab) and put it through the high-end 35mm Noritsu film scanner there. It was as if nothing had ever been wrong. It looked pretty good; certainly better than I was achieving with my own feeble scanning efforts. Unfortunately, upon further examination at home, the images basically had all the same problems that I had seen from my own scanner... just toned down because the work scanner has a bunch of auto presets enabled that clean up 90% of problems on color film.

When I got home, I ran the stuff through my own scanner again and did some further testing with the settings. Finally, I achieved a decent result. I'm not entirely sure where the problem lies, but I'm still getting muddier and grainier negatives than I would like, or than I would expect. The white balance of the film is also way out of whack, which I have actually heard from another photographer who shoots WAY more film than I do.

The verdict: I'll shoot some 120 size and probably stick to the 160 for those days when I feel the need to shoot color film. For the forseeable future, I likely won't be buying any more 35mm Portra in any ISO. I'm just not that impressed, and it's pretty dang expensive, too. We'll see how the medium format does; I'm expecting it to perform much better.

Here are the scans:

At first glance, it looks okay. I'll give it points for having nice skin tones (which is pretty much the number one goal of Portra film) The color is actually quite pleasing in this shot. But it's not as warm as I would have expected. I thought that was maybe just a white balance error in the scanning, and maybe it was. But this photo was as corrected as far as I could go towards warm in Lightroom without making my model look like she was dying of cirrhosis, and it's still not that warm tone I was expecting out of Portra 400.

 

But as soon as you go inside, the yellow monster strikes. Again, I actually color corrected the above frame as well, this time dragging it WAY over into the blue end of things to get rid of the awful muddy yellow color cast that was on everything. And even after that, it was still pretty dang yellow. You can see that the shadows get pretty muddy and the grain is even noticeable on a 500 pixel wide image. And no, I was not using AWB on my scanner ;)

The 100% crops reveal way more grain than I'm aiming for (my tastes rarely call for grain... and even if they did, I would get it on purpose by push processing). It also reveals some really awesome scratches. I guess those can be removed without too much difficulty by using Digital ICE and stuff, but I like to leave the editing for the editor and the scanning for the scanner. Also I like my film to be not scratched, for the record.

Anyway. I'm pretty underwhelmed by the stuff. I've seen others use it and get great results. It's very possible I'm just doing something wrong. Maybe I scanned wrong (likely even), maybe I edited wrong, maybe I had bad light conditions (probably not though, let's be honest), maybe I even shot it wrong and somehow accidentally underexposed by 3 stops. Maybe Portra 400 in 35mm isn't my cup of tea. That's what I'm going with for now. I'll give it another shot someday.

I haven't given up on Portra entirely yet. We're going to give 160 a whirl in 6x7 format. Here's hoping for better results.

Edit: On a happier note, my Rodinal got here today. Way faster than I was expecting. I'm hoping to burn through a roll of Delta 100 tomorrow (not on portraits since I don't have the patience to set up and wait for a shoot before trying this stuff out) and get it developed and scanned. Also have some slightly longer-term plans to do some shoots with more Delta 100 in 35mm and in 6x7, as well as going through some rolls of PanF+ in 6x7.

Kodak HC-110 and Ilford PanF+

I recently broke into the world of medium format photography by dusting off my dad's old Mamiya RB67 and finding a number of rolls of 120 PanF+ in the fridge with the rest of the old film. This stuff expired in 1987... but it doesn't seem to affect the image quality at all. It's been in the fridge for decades. Black & white film (and especially PanF+ from what I've read) keeps really well if you take care of it.

Anyway, PanF+ is Ilford's slow, fine-grain film. Since this film is older than Delta 100, and not a "T-grain" film, I imagine it's not a whole lot finer than Delta 100. But either way, it's really fine, and especially in medium format, the grain isn't noticeable unless you pixel peep or make big enlargements. HC-110 does a good job of keeping the grain size down, but since it's so small already, PanF+ will probably be the first film I try in Rodinal once I buy a bottle. Lots of people online seem to like the combo.

I'm a big fan of this stuff for portraits. A few years ago, I shot a number of rolls of it in 35mm since we had a bulk loader full of the stuff in the darkroom, but it's since run out and again... all my old negatives are MIA. If I find any though, I'll scan it in so we can see what PanF+ looks like in 35mm with various developers. Otherwise, I'll end up just buying some down the road to try out again in 35mm.

The top frame ended up on Flickr and in my portfolio, so I did some work on it in Lightroom after scanning. Because of that, the 100% crop below is taken from another photo from that same shoot; one that I did no work on after scanning. The bottom frame shows something interesting: the PanF+ is very resistant to blocking up. I did nothing on this frame after scanning. I can see detail very well even in the brightest parts of the dress, and this was taken in full sunlight from the right, as evidenced by the shadow. Seems like Ilford PanF+ and HC-110 Dilution B is a really good combo for keeping the contrast in a nice range when you shoot in direct or harsh lighting. It will be good to see how Delta 100 does on that front. Judging from other photos I've done with both films in various formats, the PanF+ does better at highlight control with HC-110B, but Delta 100 gives slightly preferable tones.

So I think I conclude that Delta 100 is my preferred portrait film when I have open shade or a cloudy day, but PanF+ is a better way to go when the light isn't so forgiving. However, I don't want to give PanF+ the first prize until I've seen what Delta 100 can do in 120 size. I have a roll to shoot tomorrow during sunset, so I'll be sure to do a couple of photos that are in harsh lighting to see how it compares.

Thus far, I'm still souping everything at regular N+0 times. Incidentally, that equals out to 6 minutes in Dilution B at 68°F with identical agitation for both films.

Here are your 100% crops for grain comparison:

The grain here is impressively fine. The sharpness seems to be better on the Delta 100 though. Improved sharpness at the cost of a little bit of grain smoothness is what Rodinal reportedly gives you in general though, so I'm more and more eager to test the stuff out.

Kodak HC-110 and Ilford Delta 100

This is my classic go-to recipe. Ilford Delta 100 is my favorite black and white portrait film that I've ever used, and may be my favorite black and white film in general, though I haven't yet tried shooting anything but portraits with it. Ilford Delta 100 was made to be a very fine-grained, "medium speed" film. I shoot as much of my digital photography as possible at ISO 100, so I'm very used to working with that ISO, and comfortable with the light conditions it's good for. I've been very pleased with the fine grain. To me it seems just as fine as Ilford PanF+, which is rated at 50 ISO. I liked the tone better than what I got out of Kodak TMAX 100, although my Pepsi-challenge between the two films was far from extensive, and I'm sure I'll revisit TMAX in the future.

HC-110 is my go-to developer because of its convenience. When I first started doing film photography a few years ago, it was the developer we had in the house. I haven't switched since I (even now) don't yet develop film in enough volume to make powder-based developers, like D-76 or Xtol very convenient. In fact, this is why I've selected Rodinal for my next developer to try out, among other reasons. HC-110's biggest pluses are simplicity of use (it's very easy to mix up just enough to develop one roll of 35mm film, and then throw it away when you're done with it), moderately fine grain and high sharpness, and good tonal range. It's a very good "all around" developer, and plays nicely with just about any film you can throw at it. It's also very flexible for playing around with different development times and dilutions, making it a favorite for Zone System enthusiasts. Ansel Adams himself reportedly used HC-110 a lot.

So my desire to try out other developers stems from curiosity a lot more than a lack of satisfaction with my current recipes. Who knows, maybe I'll like Rodinal better than HC-110?

Anyway, here are some photos I've done with this combo. Both of these were shot on 35mm film. I developed them at "N+0," which for the time being is exactly what the Massive Dev Chart says, so 6 minutes in Dilution B at 68°F.


As you may have noticed, I took this in 2011. Shortly thereafter, I left on an LDS mission and was away from photography for two years. When I returned, I unfortunately wasn't able to find any of my negatives from before I left. So my memory is a little hazy, but I'm pretty sure I did a little bit of contrast control in Lightroom after I scanned this because the scan did not render what the negative had captured. I have since revised my scanning process, so all other photos on this blog will have that consistency. This is the odd one out.


This frame was actually pretty badly underexposed. I raised the shadow detail in Lightroom after scanning. The detail was there on the negative, and there in the scan since I scan in RAW, so it was a simple matter of bumping the curves a little so it wouldn't be rendered pure black on a monitor.

Here are 100% crops of the photos. Now to be fair... this isn't really fair. I'm putting it up because I figure I might as well, but I have used Lightroom to remove a lot of the grain since I don't usually like it in my portraits. That being said, I think the grain was largely untouched in some of the more "negative space" areas because of the Masking feature in Lightroom's noise reduction and sharpening. From now on, I'll be sure to make my 100% crops straight from the scan rather than applying noise reduction first.

So there you have it. Delta 100 and HC-110B. I'm sure this won't be the last entry I have covering this combination, since I have a shoot planned in a couple of days where I plan on shooting another roll of Delta 100 in 35mm, and one roll in 120. I will almost definitely develop as per usual so I can have a consistent "benchmark" set of scanned negatives. Later I will experiment more with push- and pull-processing.

To Get Started...

So during all those hours I spend reading about film online, I often do find sites and resources that are really useful. I wanted to quickly list a couple that I found pretty cool.

#1. FilmDev
FilmDev is a site that I found the other day. It's actually what gave me the idea for this site. Basically what FilmDev does is allow film photographers to easily upload and share their own recipes. It's done based off your Flickr photostream, which makes things really easy for those of us who are on Flickr. I've started using it already, and plan to continue.

#2. The Massive Dev Chart
Probably most film photographers know about this resource. But I figured I would throw it up here anyway. The Massive Dev Chart lists just about every film/developer combination known to man, and proper development times for standard, push, and pull processing for various formats of film. Keep in mind that this site is run by hundreds or thousands of users, so the times aren't technically scripture. But I've found that the times on this site are always a really good place to start when you're trying out a new film or developer, and you an adjust accordingly from there if you don't like your results.

Eventually I'll put up a "useful links" section on the side of the blog where I can add cool new sites as I find them.

Introduction

Hey everyone. My name is Andrew. I'm a photographer. Recently, I've been finding myself more and more engrossed in film photography. After talking to a lot of friends and family, and spending lots of hours doing research on the internet, I've discovered something:

Despite the wealth of information available on the internet about film and developer combinations, it's tough to find it all organized into one place in a way that's useful.

In addition, film and developer combinations are totally subjective. Certainly there are popular pairings that many photographers use, but there is no "best" combo for everything or everyone. Because of this, I've set out on a quest to test out all the film and developer combinations that are interesting to me.

As I go, I want to keep organized and documented results, and I decided to put them online so that the next poor film photographer who doesn't know where to start with his/her film and developer preferences can get an idea of what to expect by reading here.

Each post will have the recipe I used, the developing process, and perhaps most importantly, scanned negatives and 100% crops to see grain details so you can make decisions based on what you see, rather than confusing phrases like "higher acutance but muddy shadow details" that seem to run rampant throughout all the Google searches I've done.

Over time, I also plan to carefully keyword my posts to form sort of a database that will be easily searchable for those who already know what they would like to compare.