How is Ilford XP1?

[Treymac]

Hey guys. I bought a huge lot of film about a month ago and included was a roll of Ilford XP1. I probably won't be using it for awhile, but I'm interested in how it will look. Is the film still produced, or was it discontinued for XP2? And is XP2 a lot better than XP1?

Thanks.

 

[fschifano]

It's a monochrome C-41 film, and very old. Don't know when it was discontinued, but it was a long time ago. The film is definitely way past expiration. Do what you want with it, but I wouldn't bother wasting the time, money, and effort to shoot it and process it.

 

[nworth]

XP-1 preceded Ilford XP-2. What you got must be very old, certainly more than five years out of date. Nevertheless, it may work just fine if it has been stored decently well. I've used a quite a bit of XP-1. The last time was just a couple of years ago - very outdated film stored in the refrigerator. It worked fine. The film is very similar to XP-2. The developed film appears to have a heavier mask, and the films is probably a bit less sharp the XP-2. It is still an excellent, very fine grained, sharp film. This film may require a formaldehyde based stabilizer as the last step in processing. If you have the film processed in a commercial lab, you can restabilize and dry the processed film. (That is you can restabilize if necessary. I don't know that this is absolutely necessary. Perhaps one of the color film process experts can tell us.)

 

[Oren Grad]

It's very old - XP2 replaced it in 1991.

 

[ajuk]

XP2 Was replaced by XP2 Super about 10 years ago I think.

 

[Rolleijoe]

I remember using it in the early '80s, and then Agfa had their Variopan XL, which (to me) gave easier to print results. Used XP2 in the '90s, and about 5-6 years ago the XP2-Super. In fact, I remember it being available in 4x5 sheets! That was some great stuff.

But saying 1991 is very old makes me smile. To me, very old is more like 1891!

 

[fschifano]

Yeah, I hear you Joe, but for film, 1991 is pretty well outdated. If I had 100 ft of the stuff, I might give it a try to see how it performed. It's not worth the effort for a single 36 exposure roll of 35 mm film.