Joining the bandwagon of making a terrible review whenever a new film comes out, I thought I would follow the herd by shooting 1 roll of film, developing it all wrong, scanning it with huge amounts of adjustments, then shitting it out as a full master review. Don’t worry, of course I wouldn’t do that as I shot 2 rolls. I like this film a lot, perhaps because of its character rather than technical ability. I still need to fire through many more rolls before I come to a better understanding, first impressions are interesting.
The first thing I noticed was after development; the negative itself, is super clear, almost no base fog. The jury is still out on what benefit that gives if anything, but that’s a geeky subject for another day, or never. Analysing with a densitometer, doing the whole Ansel Adams film testing method, showed this film is ISO 160 with Kodak HC110 developer. At ISO 200 this film was showing very poor shadows details, but ISO 160 had ample and ISO 100 far too much. This films quite sensitive it would appear.
Development is where I screwed up, I typically find my development times in HC110 are a bit more than anybody else’s for reasons only the film gods understand. I started at 6 mins and cooked it. However, here is the interesting part, these Images below are the cooked images. They still look fine if not just a little bit tricky to print. Further testing determined 4mins30/ 4mins45 is my development time. I have a feeling the films Max density is hard to push towards bullet proof, so even some fair over development will keep highlight detail which can be printed without some mad skills.
The images below were shot as ISO 200, so the shadow detail took a hit, then also over developed. All images scanned from darkroom prints. I like the results. I shot another roll at ISO160 developed correctly at 4:45 but I have not got around to printing those.
I just love how details just pop out of the shadows, this films quite contrasty. I did over develop which does boost contrast, but currently I feel the nature of this film has quite a lot of pop. The highlights on the greenhouse are as light as I have printed highlights for a long time whilst having full detail, it didn’t take much effort via the enlarger settings either.
The black plant pot in the foreground really stands out, almost abstractly. I’m so used to HP5’s rather flat contrast that this films quite a nice revelation. So far, I’m not drawing too many conclusions but there seems a bit of haze in this image, it’s quite atmospheric, it looks like lens flare but I’m slightly curious if this films anti-halation layer is at fault. I’m suspecting this as I’ve seen it on a few images uploaded by people using this film.
I like this image, it is quite “straight” but also quite abstract. It works with my series of images centring around the theme of the field. I walked past this spot then stopped, walked away and returned. Sometimes you know there’s an image hiding. Whilst many times I’ve shot just the grass of the field without other elements, I am now slowly starting to add in other aspects, like the rhythm of the fence.
The delicate abstractions in the grass where so delicate I printed this image a little higher contrast on top of all the other things that added contrast previously mentioned. Whilst the actual print looks better, I may print this just ½ grade less contrast on hindsight.
This is my favourite of the roll. The bright horizon has a kind of mystical quality. Again, the sky printed super light but with loads of detail retained. I would assume HP5 would need a bit of dodging and burning in this situation. HP5 is very happy to add a load of grain in the sky. What typical happens with HP5 is the sky is hard to print through and when you do manage, grain is the punishment.
This situation of shooting into a shadowed spot and still getting the areas in the bright sun having detail is quite unique. The lack of grain also quite impressive.
This final shot I really like. It just adds to the sense of place rather than being a one hit wonder print. The cracked mud of the footpath and long grass has a narrative of its own.
