Ilford HP5 vs!

[MattKing]

It can't be cheaper unless there is something different (inferior) about it. Otherwise, why make HP5+?

Films aren't monolithic. Different films have different characteristics, and the various characteristics have different levels of significance for different users in differing usages.
Otherwise why make Hp5+ and Delta 400 and Kentmere 400?
Or for that matter, T-Max 400 and Tri-X 400?
Kentmere 400 is superior to HP5+ if its relative economy and less effective anti-halation and excellent availability better meet someone's needs.

 

[thinkbrown]

Films aren't monolithic. Different films have different characteristics, and the various characteristics have different levels of significance for different users in differing usages.
Otherwise why make Hp5+ and Delta 400 and Kentmere 400?
Or for that matter, T-Max 400 and Tri-X 400?
Kentmere 400 is superior to HP5+ if its relative economy and less effective anti-halation and excellent availability better meet someone's needs.

A lot of these arguments rapidly distill into "well this company makes one expensive blue paint, clearly it's better than the cheaper blue paint" while completely ignoring that you and I might like entirely different blues. At the end of the day these are all tools for making art and preference is like 90% of it.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

Very true, but some people just can't see it that way.

 

[Ian Grant]

Films aren't monolithic. Different films have different characteristics, and the various characteristics have different levels of significance for different users in differing usages.
Otherwise why make Hp5+ and Delta 400 and Kentmere 400?
Or for that matter, T-Max 400 and Tri-X 400?
Kentmere 400 is superior to HP5+ if its relative economy and less effective anti-halation and excellent availability better meet someone's needs.

Adding to these points, films have different characteristics depending on the choice of developer.

Lachlan Young is also right in stating "the qualitative level that many are really actually operating at" is important. Accurate exposure, and tight process controls, are the key factors to achieving high quality results. You really see the differences in craft with increased enlargement.

Ideally, when doing comparisons you first need to optimise your personal EI and development time for each film/developer combination. Back around 1987/8 I did this with 3 films FP4, Tmax 100, and Agfa APX100.. I used 35mm film for the tests. I ended up using APX100 in Rodinal (at box speed), and Tmax 100 as a backup at half box speed.,

Sharpness/fineness of grain:

1. Kodak T-Max 400 II
2. Ilford Delta 400
3. Tie: Ilford HP5+ / Kodak Tri-X
4. Kentmere? I don't know exactly, but I am sure it is inferior to the films above.

Now in terms of 400 films I used XP1 the XP2 by 1987/8 always pushed to 1600 shooting rock bands. While I haven't tried Kentmere 400 I'd agree with your list. I used to use Tmax 400 for hand held MF work from it's release. However, while living abroad I switched to Ilford films ad Kodak B&W films were very hard to find.

I use HP5 sheet film, but greatly prefer Delta b400 for MF work. Ilford explained on a factory tour it wasn't economic coating both Delta 400 and HP5 as sheet film. Sales of FP4 and Delta 100 are much higher.

If I wanted a budget 400 B&W film maybe I would try Kentmere.

Ian

 

[albireo]

I'm very much with @loccdor in that these are both perfectly competent products and in the right hands they will produce results that are indistinguishable in a controlled double blind test, in most lighting and common photography conditions.

Having said that: for me personally, I have stopped playing around with Kentmere 400 in 120 altogether given that here in the EU HP5+ is just a few cents more per roll. I don't understand Ilford pricing.

At current prices available to me, HP5+ is now my main budget 120 film option.

For much better film, at the next price bracket, I am more and more leaning towards TriX, which I'm finding (in my own workflow, for my own needs) a superior film to HP5+ in all ways, and a noticeably different film all other variables being the same.

I am in fact puzzled by people reporting HP5+ to be largely equivalent to TriX. Must be again a question of "poor user tolerances" as discussed above by some. Or perhaps historical opinions by people using older versions of TriX.

Having largely abandoned Foma in 120 due to the problematic QC alone, I now use HP5+ as my daily budget option and TriX for when results really matter. Kentmere doesn't really register anymore.

 

[loccdor]

I am more and more leaning towards TriX

I agree with you, but I think a lot of it is down to personal preferences. Americans are lucky that Tri-X is our budget option compared to HP5, and only a couple dollars more than Kentmere.

 

[bfilm]

Harman explain that the Kentmere films have less silver than the Ilford films.

"The Kentmere brand, which includes the Kentmere Pan 100 and Pan 400 black & white films, is owned and manufactured by HARMAN technology. These films sit alongside and benefit from the same rigorous production and quality control processes as all ILFORD PHOTO films. While their emulsion is made using the same technology as HP5 and FP4, the key difference is that they contain less silver and therefore don't offer the same quality, versatility or characteristics."

https://www.ilfordphoto.com/choosing-your-first-ilford-film/

 

[Lachlan Young]

I don't understand Ilford pricing

That's a distributor problem, not a Harman problem. K400 in 120 should be around 75% of HP5+ price, and in 135/36 about 60% of HP5+.

For much better film, at the next price bracket, I am more and more leaning towards TriX, which I'm finding (in my own workflow, for my own needs) a superior film to HP5+ in all ways, and a noticeably different film all other variables being the same.

I am in fact puzzled by people reporting HP5+ to be largely equivalent to TriX. Must be again a question of "poor user tolerances" as discussed above by some. Or perhaps historical opinions by people using older versions of TriX.

No, but you are illustrating the point about baseline technical competence failures rather well, just not in the way you might want to.

Under your exposure conditions, Tri-X's useful shadow speed is about right for what you think it should look like. That's where most of your errors of comparison are coming from. Tri-X today is aimed to look like what people think Tri-X should look like when exposed at 400, HP5 (and HP5+) were intended to beat Tri-X for useful speed, thus when you use them under identical exposure conditions, you are effectively driving your exposure up the scale on HP5+ and making it look grainier and somewhat flatter in rendering. K400, because of side-effects of its lower cost construction, has a higher useful shadow speed than might be assumed, at a cost elsewhere (it's not as sharp, grainier than HP5+ etc and a noticeably lower image content capture/ transmission capacity). All things being equal, simply by adjusting exposures, you can make Tri-X and HP5+ look like what people assume/ claim the other must look like, but in absolute terms at larger scale enlargement or with high quality scanning, current Tri-X has slightly better granularity/ or at least 'cleaner' grain than HP5+, and HP5+ has slightly later highlight roll-off and a bit more of the grit (without as much of the image detail loss) that people used to associate with Tri-X. I use a lot of K400 in 120, but if you really think it's indistinguishable from current HP5+, then that's more about your equipment/ process/ practice limitations being inside the limits of K400, and not being able to address all of HP5+'s capacity.

 

[albireo]

That's a distributor problem, not a Harman problem. K400 in 120 should be around 75% of HP5+ price, and in 135/36 about 60% of HP5+.



No, but you are illustrating the point about baseline technical competence failures rather well, just not in the way you might want to.

Under your exposure conditions, Tri-X's useful shadow speed is about right for what you think it should look like. That's where most of your errors of comparison are coming from. Tri-X today is aimed to look like what people think Tri-X should look like when exposed at 400, HP5 (and HP5+) were intended to beat Tri-X for useful speed, thus when you use them under identical exposure conditions, you are effectively driving your exposure up the scale on HP5+ and making it look grainier and somewhat flatter in rendering. K400, because of side-effects of its lower cost construction, has a higher useful shadow speed than might be assumed, at a cost elsewhere (it's not as sharp, grainier than HP5+ etc and a noticeably lower image content capture/ transmission capacity). All things being equal, simply by adjusting exposures, you can make Tri-X and HP5+ look like what people assume/ claim the other must look like, but in absolute terms at larger scale enlargement or with high quality scanning, current Tri-X has slightly better granularity/ or at least 'cleaner' grain than HP5+, and HP5+ has slightly later highlight roll-off and a bit more of the grit (without as much of the image detail loss) that people used to associate with Tri-X. I use a lot of K400 in 120, but if you really think it's indistinguishable from current HP5+, then that's more about your equipment/ process/ practice limitations being inside the limits of K400, and not being able to address all of HP5+'s capacity.

Sounds like you haven't really even read my post and just launched in a fanboy-ish cut-and-paste "rebuttal" of what amounts to personal preferences and detected differences, that make sense within someone's specific workflow.

Half of your post is about toe characteristics and shadow detail, which don't interest me much. Any differences in shadow detail across these products, whether one "pushes" better than the other, are of no relevance to me at all.

As for k400. Please show your results proving a significant, obvious difference between Kentmere 400 and HP5 in 120 at box speed in a controlled test. Show me the perceptual data. You claim a difference? You should prove the difference, it's not up to me to prove the absence of a difference.

As for TriX. I come to it with no expectations, no bias, as I've used it very little, so half of the rest of your post makes no sense.

What I'm seeing, with my Heiland and D76 1:1 is a completely different shoulder rendition compared to HP5+, and better (for me) highlight separation than HP5. A slight spectral response difference too, that is visible in my results.

I am not home and I will show examples when I'm back, but my observations closely resemble those made here

For me, and for what I look for in film used at box speed or pulled, kentmere 400 and HP5+ have a pedigree, a family similarity. They are more similar than different in highlight and spectral rendition. TriX differs substantially in my workflow, and I prefer my results with it.

Shadow detail and grain differences: I mostly don't care. It's what's in the highlights that makes film photography worth it for me.

 

[Augustus Caesar]

That's a distributor problem, not a Harman problem. K400 in 120 should be around 75% of HP5+ price, and in 135/36 about 60% of HP5+.



No, but you are illustrating the point about baseline technical competence failures rather well, just not in the way you might want to.

Under your exposure conditions, Tri-X's useful shadow speed is about right for what you think it should look like. That's where most of your errors of comparison are coming from. Tri-X today is aimed to look like what people think Tri-X should look like when exposed at 400, HP5 (and HP5+) were intended to beat Tri-X for useful speed, thus when you use them under identical exposure conditions, you are effectively driving your exposure up the scale on HP5+ and making it look grainier and somewhat flatter in rendering. K400, because of side-effects of its lower cost construction, has a higher useful shadow speed than might be assumed, at a cost elsewhere (it's not as sharp, grainier than HP5+ etc and a noticeably lower image content capture/ transmission capacity). All things being equal, simply by adjusting exposures, you can make Tri-X and HP5+ look like what people assume/ claim the other must look like, but in absolute terms at larger scale enlargement or with high quality scanning, current Tri-X has slightly better granularity/ or at least 'cleaner' grain than HP5+, and HP5+ has slightly later highlight roll-off and a bit more of the grit (without as much of the image detail loss) that people used to associate with Tri-X. I use a lot of K400 in 120, but if you really think it's indistinguishable from current HP5+, then that's more about your equipment/ process/ practice limitations being inside the limits of K400, and not being able to address all of HP5+'s capacity.

A few years ago I did a large trial of many films, all developed in FX-39, to determine the proper dilutions and times for that developer, so that all the films would print roughly the same. I used a tripod and the same subject and lighting. All films showed better results at about 2/3 ISO, and all 400 ISO films did best at EI 250. The tests included Tri-X, HP5+, and Neopan 400. They all looked very similar, and I slightly preferred Neopan 400 for the tonality it gave. That film has been discontinued, and T-Max 400 has been redesigned; I use T-Max 400 now. Your comments about Tri-X and HP5 do not accord with my tests.