Ilford Ortho Plus

[MamiyaJen]

I have a pack of Ilford Ortho+ 4x5 and was wondering 2 things:

Am i right in thinking i can load/unload/develop under red safelight?

How is it for still life work?

I've never used it before but when i get back to uni next week i'll be able to test it out. Any extra info from anyone who's used it before would be great

 

[cliveh]

Yes you can handle this under a red safelight and you can use it in a camera, but remember it does not have full spectrum sensitivity, hence use under red safelight. Ortho is useful for many applications, such as neg/pos conversion, Sabatier, bas relief to name just a few.

 

[payral]

You can use it under red light but a very dim one. It's a quite fast film (ISO 80) so it has to be handled at least two meters from the red light.

 

[Rolleijoe]

I've been using Rollei Ortho 25 for supremely sharp & fine-grained images since 2007. It's an amazing film. Didn't know Ilford was producing it once again.

 

[Rick A]

I use it and do not open it under any safelight, no sense chancing ruination. Treat it like any other B&W film but without red sensitivity. Shooting people with it will give interresting results, the darker complexion the more detail shows up in the skin, quite unflattering. Skys blow out and render white without decent filtration, and red filters are useless. Rate it half speed under tungsten light. It's blue and green sensitive so anything red will render as black.

 

[Ian Grant]

I've been using Rollei Ortho 25 for supremely sharp & fine-grained images since 2007. It's an amazing film. Didn't know Ilford was producing it once again.

Ilford's never stopped making it. I used the Ilford Ortho film extensively for many years, it's very fast for an Ortho film and will fog unless you have the correct safelight and working conditions (distance from the safelight). We preferred to use it in darkness.

Aside from that it has fairly similar characyeristics to FP4 apart from it's lack of red sensitivity which you'd need to take into account when shooting still life work or landscapes. Like all ortho films it has a different daylight speed compared to when it's used with tungsten lighting.

Ian