Ilford HP5+ At 800 ISO

GregY · Mar 3, 2023

Braxus, This thread tempted me to shoot some HP5 @800. Pyrocat HD is my normal developer. Andrew O, suggested some processing times. I do prefer the grain size to either of the 3200 films. I was using a Leica with a Canon 50mm 1.4. Most exposures were f2.8-f4 @ 125. I processed the roll for 18 min, rollling the tank continuously. The dilution was the usual 1:1:100.
Next year at the same event (Wintergrass in Seattle), I'll try TMY2 at 400 ...likely wide open.
(Iphone photo of print on Ilford Classic FB)

Radost · Mar 3, 2023

Andrew O'Neill said:
Similar, but not the same. There is a bit more snap when exposed at EI 800 and push developed. After doing the tests to see how far I could push develop HP5 (in Xtol-R), I was quite surprised with the results, even out to EI 1600 push dev... but 1600 is the limit for me, as shadow detail is quite thin.

At least in XTOL hp5 is recommended to have the same dev time for 400 and 800

cptrios · Mar 6, 2023

Well, from a layman's (I know nothing of toes, curves, etc, and I scan all of my negatives with a relatively ancient Sony NEX-7) perspective, HP5 is awesome at 800. At least in 120. I shoot it at 800 by default, sometimes pushing to 1600, and develop in HC-110 Dil E. I almost always love the results, even if shadows sometimes require some PP. Having said that, I have never shot a roll of Tri-X, so I can't really compare.

This isn't a particularly well-composed shot, but I still like it. I think it showcases both the tonality that I like about HP5 and the issues you get pushing with shadows. If I remember correctly, it was probably at around ISO 1000:

grain elevator · Mar 6, 2023

grain elevator said:
I shot 3 rolls of HP5+ at 800 almost a year ago, out of similar considerations but also lack of light. I haven't gotten around to printing them yet, if I do soon, I'll report back.

I've printed some of these 120 negatives now. I developed a bit too little, needed quite hard filtration. And of course "exposing at 800" is very relative, I mostly used an incident meter but interpreted conservatively (e.g. held it in shade when in doubt). But the outcome looks very good to me. Even one negative that was somehow quite underexposed, fortunately the scene didn't need much shadow detail, yielded a very nice looking print at full magenta filtration.
Gotta say I look for a tonality very different from the picture posted in the comment above.
From the badly underexposed negative, could do with some burning:

A well exposed one, for the part of the scene in full sun that is, the shade on the trees in the foreground was very deep:

And a small section of the same negative at ca. 12x magnification, wanted to see the grain, no attention paid to highlight detail, it would be easy to bring out as the negative is not very contrasty, but I'm ok with a bit of paper white, adds to the sunny day feeling. This was PC-TEA, perhaps not the finest grain developer. Thumb for scale:

braxus · Mar 8, 2023

I have 2 rolls of 36 of HP5 and 1 roll of Tri-X 400 to do duplicate shots. The HP5 I'll be bracketing ISO between 400 and 800 per shot. Im now just waiting on a decent day to do some pics, and deciding what exactly to shoot as well.

Roger Cole · Mar 8, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
Backwards reasoning. Others already said why. What shooting HP5 at 800 does is simply shove the shadows even further down a long sweeping toe, creating more undiscernible mush down there, rather than improving crispness. You're just lopping off low value information, not improving it.

With HP5, I try not to shoot it in high contrast scenes; but do know how, if necessary, to apply unsharp masking to get the most out of that kind of situation. I rate it at 400 and process it in PMK pyro, but never shoot it in any format smaller than 8x10. In other words, my own interest in this film is not for sake of street shooting or photojournalism, but for sake of rich prints.

If people are afraid of pyro, that's fine. I have some more liquid A&B concentrate of PMK being shipped right now from Formulary. No need to fool around with powder. And nitrile gloves are routine in all my sink room activities. Most people have more dangerous chemicals under the average kitchen and bathroom sink, or out in the garage. Do you think all those home use herbicides and insecticides are safe? At least we don't go around spraying pyro.

Andrew, although I haven't shot HP5 for awhile, one of my preferred tricks was to go ahead and expose it at 400 (not 800 !!), and then counterintuitively overdevelop it, processing it in staining PMK. That expanded the midtone gradation wonderfully, and optimized the lovely almost etched edge effect this film is capable of. But it also created a very dense negative hard to print, especially with respect to the highlights. That's where the unsharp mask came in. It allowed me to have my cake and eat it too. Wonderful prints.
But shooting TMY400 instead is just so much easier.

That's usually the way to go with any film when you just want more contrast, which is what this is accomplishing anyway. You can always print the shadows down if that's the look you want.

There can be a certain neat look, though, to some available light shots from heavily pushed film with basically no shadow (at least, say, Zone III and down) detail but crisp midtones.

DREW WILEY · Mar 8, 2023

Well, I find that best to work with a straighter line film to obtain a crisp drop off the cliff into sheer black, when I aiming for that effect. If there's too much of a toe, you're more likely to have a slide down a muddy hill instead. Pan F would be a worst case scenario, with it's exaggerated S-curve and exceptionally short straight section; I learned that the hard way.

HP has a moderately long toe. There's a huge bifurcation regarding its usage on this forum between those who prize its quality for small format photojournalistic or street shooting reasons, and those like me with an entirely different application in mind relative to
its large format potential. And what might be wholly overlooked in a small print, or with certain kinds of subject matter, might become quite annoying in a large print made for sake of very carefully choreographed tonal values.

Radost · Mar 9, 2023

Just did a roll of HP5 @1600 and xtol. Very impressed. Will post examples soon.

traveler_101 · Mar 21, 2023

Roger Cole said:
If HP5+ is too 'flat" then increase development time. This is somewhere below "Photography 101," maybe a pre-requisite. Development controls contrast. It has minimal "real" effect on film speed. "Pushing" … generally just means exposing less and sacrificing shadow detail while developing more to restore contrast in the midtones and highlights.

This post appears to clarify a confusion that has been building in my mind as I made my way through this useful thread, viz why are some participants using the term “pushing” when all they are doing is adjusting development time? At least this is what I have learned reading - am I right? If so we should be careful to use terms correctly.

snusmumriken · Mar 21, 2023

traveler_101 said:
This post appears to clarify a confusion that has been building in my mind as I made my way through this useful thread, viz why are some participants using the term “pushing” when all they are doing is adjusting development time? At least this is what I have learned reading - am I right? If so we should be careful to use terms correctly.

To the best of my understanding, that's all there is to pushing. I can't think of any more 'correct' use of the term.

I suppose the reason to call it 'pushing', rather than just 'increased development', is that the photographer has either recognised that lack of light was an issue, or is aiming for a particular tonal 'look'.

On the other hand, 'increased development' might be applied to obtain a negative of normal contrast and tonality from a subject that is adequately lit but low in contrast.

traveler_101 · Mar 21, 2023

snusmumriken said:
To the best of my understanding, that's all there is to pushing. I can't think of any more 'correct' use of the term.

Push = decrease exposure and increase development. One follows from the other.
Pull = increase exposure and decrease development.
Happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

snusmumriken · Mar 21, 2023

traveler_101 said:
Push = decrease exposure and increase development. One follows from the other.
Pull = increase exposure and decrease development.
Happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

What have I said that’s different from that? If you are wrong, we are both wrong.

traveler_101 · Mar 21, 2023

snusmumriken said:
What have I said that’s different from that? If you are wrong, we are both wrong.

“I suppose the reason to call it 'pushing', rather than just 'increased development', is that the photographer has either recognised that lack of light was an issue, or is aiming for a particular tonal 'look'.”

You don’t seem to distinguish between the two — increased development alone is not pushing the film as I have understood the term. Someone else can perhaps clarify this.

snusmumriken · Mar 21, 2023

traveler_101 said:
“I suppose the reason to call it 'pushing', rather than just 'increased development', is that the photographer has either recognised that lack of light was an issue, or is aiming for a particular tonal 'look'.”

You don’t seem to distinguish between the two — increased development alone is not pushing the film as I have understood the term. Someone else can perhaps clarify this.

Either don’t have enough light to expose the film correctly at normal/box ISO; or you deliberately under-expose the film (i.e. up-rate its ISO). In both cases you are exposing the film as though the ISO was higher. The consequence is the same in either case: all the tones of your image will slide down the characteristic curve, and the deeper shadows that are starved of light will be black and featureless.

Increased development helps to expand mid tones which might otherwise be compressed together in the foot of the curve, but has barely any impact on recording of shadow detail. In other words, there is no actual increase in the speed of the film.

Does this help?

traveler_101 · Mar 21, 2023

snusmumriken said:
Either don’t have enough light to expose the film correctly at normal/box ISO; or you deliberately under-expose the film (i.e. up-rate its ISO). In both cases you are exposing the film as though the ISO was higher. The consequence is the same in either case: all the tones of your image will slide down the characteristic curve, and the deeper shadows that are starved of light will be black and featureless.

Increased development helps to expand mid tones which might otherwise be compressed together in the foot of the curve, but has barely any impact on recording of shadow detail. In other words, there is no actual increase in the speed of the film.

Does this help?

No it doesn’t. We’re talking past each other. My concern is terminology. Pushing (and for that matter pulling) is done deliberately for a number stylistic reasons as well as to deal with differing qualities of light; it involves both rating the film differently than its true speed and adjusting development. Increasing or decreasing development time without pushing or pulling the ISO rating of the film is a less drastic measure. It may be chosen to increase contrast, for example. As I recall the need for greater contrast was the original issue of this thread.

Craig · Mar 21, 2023

traveler_101 said:
No it doesn’t. We’re talking past each other. My concern is terminology. Pushing (and for that matter pulling) is done deliberately for a number stylistic reasons as well as to deal with differing qualities of light; it involves both rating the film differently than its true speed and adjusting development. Increasing or decreasing development time without pushing or pulling the ISO rating of the film is a less drastic measure. It may be chosen to increase contrast, for example. As I recall the need for greater contrast was the original issue of this thread.

I's a bit of semantics, as both are increasing development and both are increasing contrast as a result.

Pushing is usually deliberate underexposure in response to poor light and increasing the development to compensate. Reduced quality is expected and accepted, as it was a means to get an image. An example might be at a concert under dim lighting and a minimum shutter speed is needed to avoid motion blur ( either from camera shake or the performers moving) so the film is deliberately underexposed.

Increased development as a way to increase contrast is usually exposing at box speed and increasing the development to bring the contrast range of the scene into the desired range and a superior quality negative is often the desired result. An example might be on a large format camera shooting plants in heavy shade on the forest floor and the light range is narrow. Increasing the development will increase the contrast to improve tonal separation. Depending on the film the exposure index may or may not be altered. HP5 in particular seems well suited to increased development to increase contrast at box speed.

aparat · Mar 21, 2023

I find HP5 Plus to be a phenomenal film. In my testing, it is often the fastest of all ISO 400 films currently on the market, and it pushes to EI800 very nicely, i.e., without extreme contrast and shadow compression. Here's a print I made recently, shot wide-open, in deep shade, at EI800, developed in XTOL-R for 14.5 minutes in a Jobo rotary processor.

Texting by Nick Mazur, on Flickr

MattKing · Mar 21, 2023

Craig said:
I's a bit of semantics, as both are increasing development and both are increasing contrast as a result.

Pushing is usually deliberate underexposure in response to poor light and increasing the development to compensate. Reduced quality is expected and accepted, as it was a means to get an image. An example might be at a concert under dim lighting and a minimum shutter speed is needed to avoid motion blur ( either from camera shake or the performers moving) so the film is deliberately underexposed.

Increased development as a way to increase contrast is usually exposing at box speed and increasing the development to bring the contrast range of the scene into the desired range and a superior quality negative is often the desired result. An example might be on a large format camera shooting plants in heavy shade on the forest floor and the light range is narrow. Increasing the development will increase the contrast to improve tonal separation. Depending on the film the exposure index may or may not be altered. HP5 in particular seems well suited to increased development to increase contrast at box speed.

+1
"Pushing" means two things:
1) increasing development to increase contrast, for the purpose of
2) compensating for under-exposure.
"Expansion development" means increasing development in order to increase contrast, for the purpose of adjusting to the character (not amount) of the available light, plus the contrast needs of the photographer's vision, and the presentation material.
When one uses a "push" development, one usually used an exposure which leaves the negatives with some lost shadow detail.
When one applies "expansion development", one usually starts with an exposure which leaves the negatives with full shadow detail.
A "pull" development is sometimes used to reduce the effects of over-exposure. More commonly though, one uses "contraction development" to simply reduce contrast of the negative.
My rule of thumb is that decisions about "expansion" or "contraction" are best made with an eye towards mid-tone rendering.

Steven Lee · Mar 21, 2023

traveler_101 said:
No it doesn’t. We’re talking past each other. My concern is terminology. Pushing [...] involves both rating the film differently than its true speed and adjusting development.

No. Pushing is strictly about increasing development time. It has absolutely nothing to do with exposure. Pushing in a number in your film processor. Nothing stops you from over-exposing on purpose and then pushing. You can even push unexposed film. Hell, you can even push an empty tank!

I will even disagree with the moderator here: pushing does not compensate for under-exposure. Because that line of reasoning is a slippery slope also: the internet is full of newcomers to film who genuinely believe that exposure and development time are interchangeable. They aren't. One is not a substitute for another. They aren't linked. They are two completely different variables that can and should be tweaked independently and intelligently. But for the "intelligently" to happen, people first need to understand them in isolation from each other.

aparat · Mar 21, 2023

MattKing said:
+1
"Pushing" means two things:
1) increasing development to increase contrast, for the purpose of
2) compensating for under-exposure.
"Expansion development" means increasing development in order to increase contrast, for the purpose of adjusting to the character (not amount) of the available light, plus the contrast needs of the photographer's vision, and the presentation material.
When one uses a "push" development, one usually used an exposure which leaves the negatives with some lost shadow detail.
When one applies "expansion development", one usually starts with an exposure which leaves the negatives with full shadow detail.
A "pull" development is sometimes used to reduce the effects of over-exposure. More commonly though, one uses "contraction development" to simply reduce contrast of the negative.
My rule of thumb is that decisions about "expansion" or "contraction" are best made with an eye towards mid-tone rendering.

+1

To me, pushing and pulling are colloquial terms, whereas expansion and compaction (esp., with regard to the Zone System, as in N-1, N+1, etc.) are more formal terms. Here's how the Way Beyond Monochrome development system works applied to my TMY-2 data:

Steven Lee · Mar 21, 2023

Another misleading term is "rating film". I believe the quality of discussions would have been much higher if we all simply said exposure compensation. Maybe I spend too much time with young people, but half of them - after reading your comments about rating film - believe that film speed can be magically changed by tweaking the ISO dial. Now I understand why most point&shoots did not even have a manual ISO setting.

Steven Lee · Mar 21, 2023

Even the title of this thread is wrong and ambiguous. It is wrong because HP5+ is not an ISO 800 film and nothing can made it so. (ISO has a meaning!) And it is ambiguous because it can mean three completely different things: HP5+ under-exposed by one stop, or HP5+ pushed by one stop, or HP5+ under-exposed by one stop and then pushed by one stop.

Sorry for being chatty, I just spent an hour this morning unfucking a beginner's understanding of pushing after the damage done by him watching a bunch of pushing videos that used this very same imprecise terminology.

Radost · Mar 21, 2023

I will use a Ray Charles quote and change it to apply to photography:
I dont care what ISO and if it is pushed or pulled. HOW DOES IT LOOK?

MattKing · Mar 21, 2023

Steven Lee said:
I will even disagree with the moderator here: pushing does not compensate for under-exposure. Because that line of reasoning is a slippery slope also: the internet is full of newcomers to film who genuinely believe that exposure and development time are interchangeable. They aren't. One is not a substitute for another. They aren't linked. They are two completely different variables that can and should be tweaked independently and intelligently. But for the "intelligently" to happen, people first need to understand them in isolation from each other.

As an aside, if you see me post here about anything that doesn't involve the operation of the site, it is a post from a member who has been participating here actively since 2005. The task of being a voluntary moderator is a recent add-on, which I only took on because it doesn't prevent participation.
There is lots of healthy and civil disagreement on Photrio about matters photographic, including sometimes disagreement with my posts. Only moderation related posts require a different approach.
But on the subject at hand, we disagree about some terminology, but I'm in complete agreement about the wide-spread confusion about what "pushing" actually does.
As those who are familiar with my many posts on the subject over the years will recognize, I have always asserted that a "push" development does not meaningfully increase film sensitivity. It does, however, compensate for the effects of under-exposure, by improving the rendition of high shadows and mid-tones, usually at the expense of poorer rendition of highlights. Under-exposed shadows remain under-exposed, with poor rendition.
"Push" development can improve the results one obtains from under-exposed film - somewhat.

Craig · Mar 21, 2023

Steven Lee said:
Another misleading term is "rating film". I believe the quality of discussions would have been much higher if we all simply said exposure compensation.

I think it is important to have some language around film speed, as it chanages with the film + developer combination. Develop the same film in Rodinal and Microphen and you will get different speed points at the same contrast index.

Ilford HP5+ At 800 ISO

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Ilford HP5+ At 800 ISO

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