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.