Ilford HP5+ 400asa 35mm - 36 exp

Product Information

The results of a poll on the Film Photography Chat Facebook Group. I would have voted DD-X, but didn’t want to taint the results. Film grain can appear smooth or sharp. Smooth grain will fade from view while taking some detail away also. Sharp grain may help reveal some fine elements in your images. Grain sharpness can change depending on the developer though the film itself plays a significant role in its appearance. Overall it means that unless the film expired relatively recently, there’s a fair chance that the experiment will fail, and I’d rather trust fresh film. In 1931, a mere ~45 years after Alfred Hugh Harman started selling his first gelatine dry plates from the basement of his home at Cranbrook Road in Ilford, the company decided to supplement it’s successful SELO orthochromatic films with two high-tech newcomers: Hypersensitive Panchromatic (HP) and Fine Grain Panchromatic (FP) roll films. They were a show stopping 160 ASA and 28 ASA respectively. Nominally rated at ISO 400. Ilford HP5 Plus 35mm film will give you negatives with outstanding sharpness and fine grain under most lighting conditions.

This film outperforms much of the competition in every scenario. When you need to capture all of the details in a scene, HP5 will not let you down. Even when pushed in low-light scenarios, the shadow details reproduced on this film are second to none. That’s one of the big reasons why I always store a roll of HP5 in my camera bag. Sometimes I have the same roll of film in my camera for an entire month. This means the scenes and lighting that I’m shooting will change dramatically between photographs, and can often require radically different settings. ISO 400 may have been great for that evening stroll along the beach, but it’s not so usable in the deep dark forest nearby. So it’s always tempting to change the ISO between photographs. It is probably worth mentioning but for the photos shared above I shot the film both over exposed and under exposed. Sadly from a scientific point of view I was just winging it on the day and guessed the exposure. What I can say is some images were shot in very under exposed conditions with the light being probably -2 stops under. Highlights and shadow detail HP and FP were refined and updated over the decades that followed, becoming HP2 and FP2, then HP3 and FP3. The product line was expanded to include cine film, aerial film and yes, more of those plates.

User Reviews

Widely available and affordable, making it a popular choice for both amateur and professional photographers exposure rolls can help you make your mind up about a film without committing to a full roll of 36 exposures. A full roll of film may take you a while to finish, and this is great for when you have a project or specific idea in mind that you need a lot of images for. However, if you are simply testing a film, or want to experiment by trying a favourite film in a new way, 24 exposure is the faster and more cost effective way to go. However, while I can’t think of any reason to recommend you don’t use this film for street photography, there is still that one aspect that means you might not want to anyway. And that is that contrast again. Speaking of push processing, there are a few examples above and later in this article, which show HP5 PLUS pushed to EI 800, 1000 but I have previously written about shooting and processing HP5 PLUS much further. HP5 Plus did live up to its billing as far as contrast goes too. I definitely got more dramatic results out of the JCH Street Pan 400 and the Rollei Retro 400 too. Not that this is categorically a bad thing or a good thing. Some people might not want too much contrast.

Of course, there are plenty of other solid options for pushing HP5+. The developers above are both fine-grain developers, which means they have a solvent in them that reduces the size of the grain, and potentially some of the sharpness of the film. If you’re personally a big fan of grains, then you’ll want a High-Acutance developer like Rodinal or diluted HC-110. It’s interesting that ILFORD state that the film continues to provide “good results” when metered at up to EI 3200. My results suggest they could stretch this at least a couple of stops faster – more on that further down. Ilford launch their new 400 ISO HP5 film at Photokina. Initially there was a world shortage of this admirable product. The first batches of HP5 were exclusively in the 35mm format and were only sold in Germany, a country selected because it was (at that time) the most profitable marketplace. When Ilford describe the differences between their Delta and Plus lines, they mention how films in the latter are good for beginners or those still learning – which is all of us, to be fair. They can handle under or overexposure and can be pushed and pulled all over too. I’ve been developing at home with this film for three years straight, and have learned a lot about working with it to get the best results. This HP5 review is going to go over a number of development strategies that I’ve used to get great results. The chart below goes over the best developers for every situation you’ll encounter.The HP line welcomed a newcomer in 1965: HP4. Available initially in 120 and 127 formats, HP4 was joined by 400 ASA 35mm rolls a year later. Both HP3 and HP4 were available concurrently until late December 1969 when a staged discontinuation of HP3 began. I used Delta 400, expired in the 1980s, at EI200 to photograph the Autumn Equinox at Primrose Hill in London. The crushed dynamic range made for some contrasty results, and I’m pleased with the results. Grainy and atmospheric, but with enough visible detail for the story to remain clear. These will fit in nicely with a wider project which includes some very grainy night-time work made on in-dated Delta 3200. For completeness, there was an Ilford HPS film produced from 1954 to 1998 too, although that was of a different lineage, being a precursor to the high-speed Delta 3200 that Ilford now make. It’s wide exposure latitude makes it a great choice for beginners, those returning to film as well as the more experienced professional users.

Want to see some of the different ways you can use Ilford HP5 400? We have put together some of our favourite HP5 400 shots by our customers – you can see them here. Judging by the results it gave me and for the price at which it did, I have to say I like it quite a bit. There’s no question I’d shoot it again. That said, they also advise their Delta films display less grain, thanks to their tabular-grain emulsion vs. the traditional grain of the Plus range, so you can’t logically expect your results to be super clean with the HP5. Ilford does not list any grain size or image resolution measurements for HP5+ though I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s identical to Tri-X’s RMS 17. Having said that, any film or digital camera will give more contrast in certain light than in others, and I certainly found this with HP5 Plus.You said, “I tend to like my photos slightly on the overexposed side, so setting my ISO to 800 helps with that”. Surely if you’re rating 400 ISO film at 800 ISO, you’re *underexposing* it. If you’re then pushing it one stop in development, you end up with a correct exposure. So there is no overexposure here. There’s a branding reason Ilford uses Plus or “+” in their emulsions’ names. HP5+ is grouped with FP4+ (est. 1935) and Pan F+ (est. 1948) in the Plus range of films. Films in Ilford’s Plus range are all the latest generations of “established” emulsions in ISOs 400, 125, and 50.