Printing old XP1 negs on VC paper?

Hi folks,

Quick question - a friend has given me some old 120 film he would like some prints made of, taken on Ilford XP1.

I'd never heard of XP1 before, but clearly it's the predecessor of XP2 (doh) - i.e. C41 black & white film.


Anyway, my question is... The negs have a distinctly brownish cast to them; they look great, just... well, brown. Is this likely to cause me kerfuffles printing on variable-contrast paper or should it be fine? (Is that normal for the C41-process-B&Ws, out of interest? I've never actually seen one before!)

No they should print easily, XP1 is very similar to XP2.

Ian

Aha, good stuff, thanks! I'll give it a bash then.

I used to use XP1 quite a bit - the brown does make them look quite pretty I always thought . As reported, they will print perfectly well (I always used to have more luck with XP1 than regular film, which says as much against my skills as it does for the quality of XP1)...

I believe Kodak's C41 B&W have the same orange mask as colour C41 films as they are intended to be printed on minilab colour paper whereas Ilford's film is designed for printing on normal b&w paper and hence does not have the orange mask. I think Fuji's C41 films have the orange mask too but I've never seen any so am not 100% sure.

Have fun, Bob.

Most of R Hicks and F Schultz's books have a lot of prints from both XP1 and later XP2+. They look fine and in fact, if I recall correctly XP1 and the successors are F Schultz's favourite films. My impression is that if XP1 had been a difficult film to print they'd have said so. Quite the reverse was my conclusion from their comments

pentaxuser