Wow. Totally unlike any results I have EVER seen with XP2+. I actually really like the stuff.
If you see more grain and higher contrast than you like you don't need to develop differently, just expose more. I've always thought it was best shot at EI 200. And one of the beauties of it, and why I use it in fixed exposure cameras (especially since they're set for bright sun at 100 and I almost never shoot in bright sun, almost always lower light) is that it's almost impossible to overexpose it, or at least to expose it too much to the point that the highlights block and prints don't look good, and it becomes less, not more, grainy with more exposure like C41 color, and unlike conventional black and white. It WORKS fine at EI 100, but in my experience doesn't remotely NEED that much exposure. 200 seems optimum, 400 is just fine, and 800 is often acceptable.
@Roger Cole, thanks for the above - In the quote above I have highlighted those two points you made because in my experience they summarise well two of the properties of this film I've grown to appreciate. I have not found a traditional black and white film that, in my own workflow, can give me those - though admittedly I haven't tested all film types currently offered, so perhaps some of the premium Kodak or Fuji stuff might approximate some of the above.
Here's an example. XP2+ developed by a commercial lab in C41. Rolleicord Va with a Xenar lens. This was taken just before sunset. A spot measurement was taken with the internal spot meter of my Nikon F90X set for 320EI on the bark of the tree bottom left and placed in zone III. The negative was scanned as a raw 16bit/channel linear positive (for our wet-lab print friends: this means there was NO automatic software interpretation performed by Vuescan, the tool I used), manually inverted, gamma corrected. No further edits were carried out (no digital burning, dodging, grain manipulation, etc) apart from setting the black point to taste+ a resize.
Now I don't normally go looking for scenes with such a dramatic dynamic range, but if I do it again, I will know that XP2+ is my friend.
Here's a square crop from the original real 4000dpi - detail from the highlight-rich area of the negative. Importantly, I didn't bother measuring any of this with my F90X. As Roger up here suggests, I went ahead and trusted XP2+ to do what it does well.
Another scene, very different lighting. The whitewashed surface of an old building in late morning light, approaching midday. Rolleicord Va. A spot measurement was taken with the internal spot meter of my Nikon F90X set for 320EI on the shaded area under the balcony, and then moved to zone IV. Other methods exactly as above.
In retrospect, I could have gone down to 250 or 200 EI to further highlight the burning intensity of the 'whiteness' of that surface, but this was one of my first rolls with the film so I was still going by the book.
But yes. I'm really pleased at how this film, at least in 120 format, renders highlight detail (which is mostly what I'm after in my hybrid film workflow). Another advantage is that I really trust the lab that does C41 for me (I develop my B/W myself but send my C41 out - I tried it at home, it works, but it's boring imo) so sometimes it's refreshing to think that I can forget about any development-related variables and just concentrate on exposure-related decisions. Also, time is scarce anyway, and I'm shooting a lot of Kodak Gold and Ektar, so throwing in a few rolls of XP2+ in the order doesn't hurt.
Ilford if you're reading this - I'm a fan of this product
