Ilford FP4 – Page 2 – tim dobbs photography

Week 20 – Playing with flash

I have a pair of studio strobes ( cheapy interfit 150 watt) and to be honest they very rarely see the light of day as if I need flash I use my Nikon speedlights. Just as a bit of a challenge last w…

Source: Week 20 – Playing with flash

Testing my Canon AF35M with Ilford FP4@200…….

I picked up this little point & shoot a while back now it was only a few quid off e-bay but have not had much chance to try it out.

As I have a couple of days off work I thought it was time to see if it was working or not.Before we braved the cold and frost I loaded up some ilford FP4 and rated it at iso 200, popped in a couple of AA batteries and shot a quicky of one of my camera shelves with the inbuilt flash.

We then went for a walk in the bright sunshine but freezing temperatures.After developing the negatives I was extremely pleased with what the camera produced, lovely and sharp with great contrast and only 2 shots actually missed focus and they were most probably my fault as I was slightly too close. This camera is slightly bigger than my fav Nikon L35AF which fits my pocket perfectly which was the only thing that I didn’t really like about this excellent little camera.

The picture quality well exceeded my expectations, I will put a roll of Ektar through it next and will post the results.

Thanks for looking……..

View from the top……. testing Spur Ultraspeed Vario

Amy came home from Uni for a couple of weeks and she fancied a walk up the valley, so as I had just received some new sample film developer from Spur Photochemie http://spur-photo.com/ in Germany I loaded up the OM2n with some ilford FP4 and rated it at 400 iso to test how the developer performed.

The developer in question was Spur Ultraspeed Vario and is used when you want to push or pull your film and keep as much detail and contrast in your negatives possible.

It is a 2 bath dev and this is the 1st time that I have processed this way.

Both mixes were 1+11 when rating FP4 at 400 and was processed 5 minutes for the 1st bath and followed by 15 minutes for the 2nd.

Agitation was 30 sec constant inversions then stand for the remaining 4:30 and the 2nd bath was also 30 sec constant inversions then twice every minute thereafter.

The results were very impressive indeed, the shadow/highlight detail was excellent and the sharpness and contrast were great too.

I will try pulling some FP4 next just to get a comparison and will post the results.

Thanks for looking

Click on an image to view larger…….

Mountain walk with FP4 instead of my beloved HP5………

I bought 20 rolls of Ilford FP4 the other week with the intention of shooting some still life and portraits but popped a roll into my Nikon F4 and went out to shoot some landscapes first.

I developed the roll using Ilfotec HC hoping to get a bit of punchy contrast in the images and I was not disappointed.FP4 does not give me the feel that I like in my images but it is still very nice, the still life stuff I shot on the walk were very nice, plenty of detail and great highlight and shadow tones.Since trying shooting some still life with HP5 I am a little torn between the 2 films for that subject. I love the contrast and grain of HP5 but the smooth tones and detail of FP4 are great.