[pure-silver] Re: Ilford XP2 (was: Ilford PanF 50)

Peter Badcock wrote:
> On 24/07/06, *Graham Hughes* <graham@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> <mailto:graham@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
>     As far as XP2 goes, I have to admit to liking the film's results,
>     although it's murder to get people to print it properly on color film. 
> 
>  
> XP2 was designed specifically to be developed in C-41 and printed in a
> B&W enlarger to B&W paper.  If one then appreciates that the prints
> obtained from the colour lab are simply 'proofs', then it can be a
> starting point for when you return to your darkroom. 

Oh, no question at all.  Green prints and atrocious contrast are just
something I've learned to live with when I get it developed; the prints
I get back are more like 'suggestions' rather than proper proofs, with
very rare exceptions.  I was full of praise for the printer for the
single time I got proofs back on Crystal Archive that were actually
neutral and well printed.  I still don't know how he did it.

As for the downsides, yeah, the lab has to be competent, and that's
never cheap.  And even competent labs have a devil of a time getting
good prints onto color paper.  And it's not silver suspended in gelatin,
for whatever archival implications that has.

My main film in that speed range is Delta 400, with Neopan 400 and Tri-X
400 as runners up.  Yet while I generally prefer to do normal silver
development and use normal B&W film, XP2 has some subtle advantages that
are not relevant for Pure Silver (viz. scanning) and some other
differences that are.  XP2 starts shouldering early and continues for a
very long time; it also has a long toe, which is why exposure indices
for the film are so over the map.  I know of no normal B&W film with a
curve like this; Tri-X 320 is as close as I'm currently aware of, and
*that* film has as far as I can tell a continuously upward-curving
characteristic curve--definitely not what I want.  This attribute of XP2
is not always desirable and it can sometimes make the negative hard to
print but it can be very convenient other times, as can the grain
structure (very different due to the dye cloud formulation).

Ultimately just another tool in the chest, but not one that should be
easily dismissed.  I'd be quite sad to see it go, in a way that I would
decidedly not be if Kodak decided to axe whatever T400CN has mutated into.

(I think I stopped it from doing the MIME weirdness, Richard.)

Graham
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