The above picture was taken with the Promaster 35mm body and
the Pentax 135mm lens using Ilford HP-5, ISO 400 black & white film with
the lens wide open (f2.8) and a shutter speed of 1/250.
In an earlier blog post I complained that the Kodak 400TX
film I used was super grainy and displayed way too much contrast. It was
nothing like the “old” Tri-X 400 I used in the last century when I was shooting
nothing but film for obvious reasons so I decided to try my second favorite
film, Ilford HP-5. This one acquitted itself much better. It’s still a bit
grainy but with much better gray tones. This looks more like the old black
& white film I used to use back in the 1970’s and 80’s when I shot as much
black and white as anything else.
I even had my own darkroom for a while. I eventually decided
that I liked taking pictures a lot more than I enjoyed being locked up in a
dark chemical laden environment for hours at a time. Besides, for a few bucks I
could pay someone else to process my film and prints while I went out in the
fresh air and enjoyed taking more pictures.
Anyway, back to the black & white film discussion. I
still have some Kodak TX-400 to experiment with some more. I also have some
slower ISO 125 and 100 films to play with and I’ll be sure to report my results
here.
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