Look what I got today (HP3!)

Full, unopened box of HP3 sheet film. It's interesting... the film feels like it's wrapped in a sort of thick matt-coated foil (had to poke around it immediately in a darkbag! )
From the leaflet I am guessing this is c.1968 only because of the "C 68/B" at the bottom of the info sheet and I read up and found out this film was made between 1965-1969 (with the ilford paddlewheel logo on it).
Probably going to try out a sheet for enlarged negatives since I don't have a 4x5 camera yet. Just going to try the usual times I use for fomapan100 sheetfilm under the assumption that it was ASA 400 back in 1968 and it might have lost 2 stops by now.
It's neat seeing that ID-11, Bromophen, Microphen and PQ Universal were all around back then.

Oh dear I think there's some basefog*


*massive understatement

HP3 (as wounded film) was introduced in 1941 rated at 125ASA. Sheet film followed in 1943. In the early fifties it was rerated (speed increase?) as 200AS, in 1960 rerated as 400ASA due to the speed margin becoming obsolete. It was finally replaced by the HP4 in 1969, which started being offered alongside in some formats as early as 1965 (1960?).

Yeah I narrowed it down to 1965 based on the logo changeover (on the Ilford chronology i found online) and it's ASA 400 and I read they stopped making it the end of 1969, which is why I suspect the C 68/ thingy at the bottom of the info leaflet might be copyright 1968 so this might be 1968-1969 stock.

Yes, that Ilford chronology is great.

According to the chronology (http://website.lineone.net/~mauricefisher/Ilford Chronology.html) entry for 1969:

"... However, Ilford promised to continue manufacturing HP3 in sheet film and 35mm cassettes as long as this was justified by world-wide demand. (Might it survived until HP5 launched in 1976 ?)".

It does not mention when the paddle-wheel logo was discontinued. If you email Ilford with the batch number they may be able to tell you when it was produced.

Cheers, Bob.

I've got quite a lot of old film and (especially) glass plates.

I collect the packaging as curios and recycle some of the plates for re-coating, but to be honest find very little of anything over about 30yrs old is ever useable. Fast emulsions can die much sooner, too. I bought a job lot of Kodak and Ilford plates recently - all circa 1960s; O.800, HP3, HPS, even some later FP4 - all completely fogged and in the case of Kodak often mouldy!

The one exception to this is very slow materials; ortho or ordinary process plates, for example. The above batch included some very slow Kodak process plates which are as good as new and I once got some very acceptible images from some 'Wellington' process plates which I guess were from around 1920-something but still pretty fog free. I think their speed of about 1/2 ASA saved them!