Hi All,
In a kind-of forced situation, I had to use Ilford XP2 black and white
film. This is still
such a weird film, using colour chemistry + three dye-coupled layers
instead of fixing silver
silver grains. The situation was as an attendee of a wedding of some
close friends of ours. This
film claims to be fully usable across the range of ISO 50 to 800, and
I was interested to see the
results.
Both images shot with OM-1n, with 90/2.0 Macro wide open, and both
were printed to Ilford MG IV
satin paper (5x7in) via Omega D5XL enlarger, Rodenstock Rodagon 80/4.0
enlarger lens. Prints scanned
with Epson V700. I chose these two images to start with, because of
the extreme ISO range.
This one was exposed at about ISO 1600, it was really really dark in
the church. In retrospect, this
was a bad hurried scan (the print has highlight detail) but ti still
conveys the general look:
http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs51/f/2009/313/3/0/Pulpit_by_philosomatographer.jpg
Notes: The composition etc. is pretty bad, and the groom is lost in
the black, but from where I was
sitting, I couldn't do much about it, and this was not a job for me,
just a casual "memory" snapshot.
This one was exposed at the opposite end of the scale, at ISO 50:
http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs50/f/2009/313/4/5/Flower_Bubble_Girl_by_philosomatographer.jpg
Notes: This was one of the young flower girls. I barely noticed her
coming to stand next to me, as we
were waiting outside for the bride and groom to exit the church.
I wanted to isolate her from the background as much as possible, so I
opened up to f/2.0, focused on here eyes, and made the image.
I would have liked her to blow some of her bubbles across the
"negative space" in my image, but even without that, I feel the subtly
textured negative space balances the soft image of the little girl.
But damn, I can't imagine ow AF on any DSLR would allow me the
same focusing accuracy and composition in an instant. I *really* do
not miss AF.
Just to post another example of why I love the Magnificent 90/2.0,
this was a recent street shot early in
the morning, taken on more conventional FP4+ film, of the people using
the bridge(s) to cross the busy road and
walking to/from the Durban morning market (I was there on a recent
business trip).
http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs51/f/2009/313/0/f/Bridges_to_the_Market_by_philosomatographer.jpg
Anyway, your comments appreciated. I just wanted to share some
experience with XP2 film, and I must say, it's
quite compelling, apart from the drag of me not being able to develop
it myself. If I had to chose ONE film
to put into ONE camera, across a wide range of conditions, XP2 would
be quite high up on my list.
The dynamic range (well, on the highlight side) is just astounding, it
may even beat FP4/HP5.
cheers,
Dawid
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