These are the rest of the keepers from a roll of Ilford HP5+ 400 that I shot last year (the others are in this Bellefonte in Black and White post). This is the only roll of HP5 that I’ve shot, so my thoughts are based on a very limited experience, but I’d say that I would be happy to shoot with this film again. Relative to other black and white films, it’s pretty affordable, and I was happy with most of the photos I got out of this roll.
These sheepies came over to investigate Ginny Mcflooferson, whose nose is in the lower right.
November 4, 2020 | Canon AE-1 Program, 50mm f/1.8, Ilford HP5+ 400 | f/11 1/500s
One funny thing I found, though, is that this film really puts to the test one’s willingness to accept the imperfections of film media, specifically in terms of film grain. Some film photographers love grain, for others, grain is something to avoid. For my part, I’m happy to embrace the particulars of the medium, but I will say that when I got these shots back I was surprised by the amount of grain I saw (and maybe I should'n’t have been). There is a rough look to these shots that’s a bit different from what you’d see in higher-end black and white films, like Kodak TMax.
So now that I have it in front of me, I have to confess that I’m less enthusiastic about film grain than I would have expected, however, on the plus side, I think this makes me a bit more accepting of noise in my digital photos. Now digital noise and film grain are not the same thing, but, I do think that this gives me a bit of perspective on my practices of zooming in to a digital image and adjusting noise reduction to make it as “clean” as possible. Some folks will notice it, but I figure, if I’m happy enough with how these came out, I should be able to let myself be ok with not obsessing over smoothing out those digital rough patches all the time.
Tannenbaum Farms
November 7, 2020 | Canon AE-1 Program, 50mm f/1.8, Ilford HP5+ 400 | f/8 1/125s
Slab Cabin Run, underpass below College Avenue
State College, PA | Canon AE-1 Program, 50mm f/1.8, Ilford HP5+ 400 | f/4, 1/125s
House and Rocks
Canon AE-1 Program | 50mm f/1.8 | Ilford HP5+ 400 | f/8, 1/125s
I haven’t done many film versus digital comparisons, but when I was taking photos of my sink late on election night 2020 (yeah, these are a lot of glasses, but hey, that was a long night, right?), I figured that was as good a time as any to do a side by side.
Can you guess which shot was taken on film and which shot was taken on a digital camera?
Looking at these now, this is a kind of easy one—the top one has that grain I mentioned above, and it has that rough, documentary feel that as of now I associate with this film stock.
I do think I prefer the former, as that higher contrast, grainy look feels well-suited to this composition. It’s a messy sink, from a long and fraught evening, and I feel that’s better captured in the first image.