Ilford HP5/ FP4 Motion Picture film

I picked up a tin of each of these today. The labels say:-

Ilford HP5 Type 612 - 200ft (61.0m) x 35mm on 2" core perforated emulsion out

and

Ilford FP4 Type 512 - 200ft (61.0m) x 35mm on 2" core perforated emulsion out

Does anyone have any info?
I presume I can bulk load and shoot in a 35mm camera?
How to process?

Any help appreciated as I can't find much on Google!

ajmiller said:

I picked up a tin of each of these today. The labels say:-

Ilford HP5 Type 612 - 200ft (61.0m) x 35mm on 2" core perforated emulsion out

and

Ilford FP4 Type 512 - 200ft (61.0m) x 35mm on 2" core perforated emulsion out

Does anyone have any info?
I presume I can bulk load and shoot in a 35mm camera?
How to process?

Any help appreciated as I can't find much on Google!

Click to expand...

It's probably going to have slightly different perforations (called B&H, with rounded sides) but that shouldn't affect anything, just something to note.

If you have an Alden 200 bulk loader you should be able to drop the roll right in; otherwise you're going to have to spool it into two 100' lengths, or just hand spool it in the dark into individual cassettes.

If it's really spooled emulsion out (which is very weird for a 35mm film; I know some 16mm cameras required their film to be spooled that way) then you're going to have to deal with that if you're using a bulk loader. You basically need to wind it into an upside down cartridge. Or, of you are respooling it down to 100' lengths you can reverse the winding then.

Duncan

ajmiller said:

I picked up a tin of each of these today. The labels say:-

Ilford HP5 Type 612 - 200ft (61.0m) x 35mm on 2" core perforated emulsion out

and

Ilford FP4 Type 512 - 200ft (61.0m) x 35mm on 2" core perforated emulsion out

Does anyone have any info?
I presume I can bulk load and shoot in a 35mm camera?
How to process?

Any help appreciated as I can't find much on Google!

Click to expand...

Sure, pick up an "Alden 200" bulk loader. It will take the full 200 feet unlike most other bulk loaders that only take 100 feet.

I can't be sure the HP5/FP4 movie stock is the same as far as developing as standard HP5+ / FP4+ and it might even be the pre"plus" stock. Good luck! Someone will chime in about the development I'm sure, but a good general starting point is Kodak HC-110(B) for 5 minutes and go from there. I suggest this developer for two reasons, for one as I said the standard timeframe for development is generally five minutes with many films so that's helpful, but also it contains a chemical which helps reduce fogging, which this film may have (especially the HP5+) because it's possibly older and expired.

Good luck.

You might get all the info you need here, Tony, but I'd be inclined to contact Ilford. They are bound to know if there are any things to look out for in terms of loading and processing what is movie stock film

pentaxuser

Simon from Ilford may just chime in here to help.

Thanks.
No sign of a 'plus' just HP5 & FP4.
Both tins have the same white tape seal so I'm presuming they're unopened?

ajmiller said:

Thanks.
No sign of a 'plus' just HP5 & FP4.
Both tins have the same white tape seal so I'm presuming they're unopened?

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Probably, but you can always re-tape.

The times really shouldn't be much different than current times, don't be scared just give it a try, the film could be totally fogged and useless. The FP4 should be less fogged. Give it a shot

You will need a one inch core or reel as the two inch cores have a one inch inner diameter and will rattle.

Two reels is simplest about 40 minutes to rewind x100 foot without a spooler.

The reels come (came) as standard with Fuji or some Agfa bulk loads.

Some Cine Cameras did prefer film wound emulsion out.

I believe that Illford just packaged the same stocks for cine use, although the specs may show slightly different as movie film is normally developed to slightly lower contrast.

The PLUS versions came out many years ago, so you are dealing with Very stale film by this point. Sugest cutting off 4 or 5 feet in the darkroom and hand loading it into a cassette (emulsion in of course) and shooting and developing to see if it is worthwhile playing with.

My guess is that the FP4 has a good chance of still working after a fashion.

Normal movie negative is perforated BH1866 while still film is perfed Ks 1870, but the 4 ten thousands of an inch difference should not throw off any still camera.

One funny quirk of the Illford Movie stock I used in the past was it was edge printed (Illford Safety Film) to read right from the emulsion side. it has latent image footage numbers which were made using a mechanical counter which also read from the emulsion side. (made perfect sense to do it that way if you were doing old fashioned hand editing.)

Have Fun.

Thanks Charles for your reply. I do plan on testing a length first as you suggest.

cmacd123 said:

Some Cine Cameras did prefer film wound emulsion out.

I believe that Illford just packaged the same stocks for cine use, although the specs may show slightly different as movie film is normally developed to slightly lower contrast.

The PLUS versions came out many years ago, so you are dealing with Very stale film by this point. Sugest cutting off 4 or 5 feet in the darkroom and hand loading it into a cassette (emulsion in of course) and shooting and developing to see if it is worthwhile playing with.

My guess is that the FP4 has a good chance of still working after a fashion.

Normal movie negative is perforated BH1866 while still film is perfed Ks 1870, but the 4 ten thousands of an inch difference should not throw off any still camera.

One funny quirk of the Illford Movie stock I used in the past was it was edge printed (Illford Safety Film) to read right from the emulsion side. it has latent image footage numbers which were made using a mechanical counter which also read from the emulsion side. (made perfect sense to do it that way if you were doing old fashioned hand editing.)

Have Fun.

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Dear AJ Miller,

Its Pre Plus film so likely 1992 and before, probably 1980's, we did use white (soft) re-attachable tape on tins. All our motion picture emulsions were coated specially and are not identical to the camera film emulsions, but close enough. I would never put a motion picture film with MP perforation of any sort through any camera of mine, but lots of people who know better than me do. So, enjoy your experimentation.

Simon ILFORD Photo / HARMAN technology Limited

I think the material mentioned by the OP is like this stuff that I used to use as a student, about thirty years ago - and it was old then! I loaded the film into cassettes measured by feel against a piece of wood with two nails banged in to it, at night, up in the roofspace. It worked adequately and didn't destroy any of my few 35mm cameras. Probably not the thing to run with a motor-drive though, as the perforations are a tiny bit different.

I'm assuming that the OP has a can like my prehistoric one, currently used to hold short remnants of other bulk rolls. The markings of the grid on the cutting-board behind are 10mm and the printed label has a diameter of about 107mm.

Development now would depend heavily on what has happened to the film since it was made. Try the FP4 first, expose as though it was 64asa and develop for the standard time - adjust exposure and dev from there. If you have a choice of developers use the least foggy one.

Thanks Simon and Martin. I have a couple of junk shop cameras I'll be trying it in so should be ok. My tin is a bit different to yours Martin - same type (512) film just different label design. Thanks for the exposure and development times etc.

I've had a few thousand feet of cine through my Nikons, Canons and Leicas. No problems with cameras through the QA is for movies not stills eg filter any stock solutions.

Last of the Illford MP film came in Cardboard boxes rather than cans. I still have a very small bit left of my 200ft roll of Pan f out of the last batch, sold by a distributor as a past date clear out, but then again I don't use much pan f. Many - Many years back, Freestyle sold some repacked and respooled FP4 MP neg....

All the illford MP film predates the reorganization so it has been stored a while.

I used to use one of the services that made slides out of Eastman colour back when that was a popular fad. and so I ran a lot of MP film through Pentax, Ricoh and other cameras. I have also used N74 and Double-X in Canons, Minoltas, Ricohs and pentax. Never a glitch.

ajmiller said:

Thanks Simon and Martin. I have a couple of junk shop cameras I'll be trying it in so should be ok. My tin is a bit different to yours Martin - same type (512) film just different label design. Thanks for the exposure and development times etc.

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A fun way to try things like these out is a Holga with the 35mm kit. I'm sure edge markings won't matter one bit.

Oh, yes the edge numbers and so on are basically replaced by footage ie. distance not exposures.

I'm steadily working my way through a 400' roll of FP4 Plus MP film in a cardboard box, as mentioned above. It's dated 2004 and has a little base fog but nothing to worry about. I've run it through various cameras without any problems with the perfs. Still rating it at box speed.
Steve

The slightly different perfs on movie camera film will not have any ill effect in a 35mm camera so go ahead and try it.

I reckon a test is worth it, but you might not get much in the way of results. I picked up some cheap cans of old Ilford movie stock as well, a while back. Some were 16mm HP5 stock, I'd guess probably 30+ years old, which were just about usable with the expected age fog and loss of sensitivity. There was also a 400ft can of Mark V 35mm, which ISTR was a 400ASA speed movie film, but very old, late 1960s or so. Unsurprisingly it was useless after so long, and it ended up in the bin.

Had chance to process the film today.
I decided to try the HP5 as a test and used about 5ft in my Nikon FM2n - hopefully no damage done....
I exposed at 400 and processed it in ID11 1:1 for 13 minutes. (the only dev I have on hand).

Yet to print anything but the scans aren't too bad.
Anyway, it seems to work!

Thanks for your help and advice.

The F in F069400 is the code to indicate what film you shot BTW, I think the sceme was A or B for Pan f C or D for FP4, etc. Just think FILM Ferrania is talking about the film of Fellini, but Ilford was probably the Film of Hitchcock

My local camera shop has some 200' cans of HP5+ motion picture film which they say they are successfully selling to students. I picked up one can yesterday, seems to be a similar product to the one described in this thread. The chap in the shop told me it's emulsion out, though there's no indication on the can label. I guess I will find out when I open it!

Any more info on this film? Is it likely to be similar to the one discussed in this thread?

Xmas said:

You will need a one inch core or reel as the two inch cores have a one inch inner diameter and will rattle.

Two reels is simplest about 40 minutes to rewind x100 foot without a spooler.

The reels come (came) as standard with Fuji or some Agfa bulk loads.

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You can slip the two-inch core over a one-inch core.

Agulliver said:

Any more info on this film? Is it likely to be similar to the one discussed in this thread?

View attachment 164469

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So far as I am aware (having also checked the Harman website for cine-film stock-numbers) the cine-film mentioned in the 'old' part of this thread was discontinued long before the Ilford/Harman split in the company. Those emulsions were not the 'Plus' variety.

If your local shop are faking up labels saying HP5+, containing forty year old cine-film then they won't be in business very long! The same goes if they are re-labelling Orwo or Foma cine-film. Or this stuff could be the leftovers of a special-order someone gave to Harman, which could be very interesting.

When you open up the tin, look at a scrap of film in the daylight (the bit where the tape sticks down is always slightly damaged, so just snip that off in the dark) and check the perforations. If they are the usual rectangular-with-rounded-corners shape then it was not perforated as cine-film, while if the shape has curved long-sides then it was perforated as cine-film. Next is to check the edge markings, if they are footage markers (rather than exposure numbers) then it was originally made as cine-film, rather than being something(?) else. If the edge markings are exposure-numbers and the film name, then you have a different answer.

Please let us know what happened

EDIT: Dohhhhhh, then I looked at your attachment picture in a magnified view (I am on a small-screened device at the moment) and saw that there was a date of November 1995 on the label! So it is old stock from somewhere, not a new order number. If you are lucky, then some film-company, somewhere just cleared out their film-fridge -- if you are less lucky, there were a few packing-boxes rediscovered after being stuck high up in a hot warehouse all this time!

Be careful though as the instructions say that it is wound emulsion side out which is the opposite of still film.