Hey everyone…I know it’s been awhile since I’ve shared anything. You know sometimes we just get busy attending to more important matters. Anyways…I’m trying to get back in the groove of shooting, developing, printing and all the fun stuff that comes with it.
Sooo….have you ever shot Ilford’s XP2 Super film? It’s great right? You can shoot it at 50, you can shoot it at 150, heck you can shoot it at 800 all on the same roll. Then develop in your C41 chemistry and boom, you have beautiful negatives to scan and print. But…did you know that you don’t have to use C41 chemicals to develop this film?
Ilford XP2 can be processed in B&W chemicals. Some of you may have already known that and some of you may have not. Honestly, I think it’s pretty neat. I for one really have no interest in developing with C41 at the moment but I do have plenty of B&W chems to use.
I was given a bag of expired film and I was told it was stored one way but who really knows right? TMax 100, TMax 400, some P3200, and some other odds and ends. I also was given some old expired Ilford XP2. It had expired in the early 2000’s and like any expired film, it’s always a gamble.
Now, I’ve developed the XP2 film in Xtol before with beautiful results but have yet to try XP2 in HC-110. Soooo with my curious mind, I wanted to give it a try. I grabbed Big Boy (Pentax 67) and threw the roll of expired XP2 in there. I came across an example of this and the film was rated at 150, so that’s what I went with. Would it work with this expired roll? I wasn’t sure.
I went for my walk with Big Boy and shot the roll. I couldn’t wait to develop and see what kind of results I would get so when I got home I grabbed a tank along with the changing tent and went to town. Yup…this roll was so tightly curled that it took about 20 min to get on the reel. O yea, a few curse words went off in my head.
Developing went fine and I had negatives. HC-110 1+49 @7 minutes did the trick. And we all know, pulling those negatives out of the tank and seeing them for the first time is like magic. I feel like a kid in a candy store. They looked decent and I couldn’t wait to scan them. Overall, I was happy with the results. Nothing great or emotionally powerful about the photos but knowing that this works that was worth it all. Below I attached some of the photos I took. Enjoy!
