This must be one of those YMMV issues...
I never shot enough XP2 to form a conclusive opinion, and I never did any testing of it. I just shot a handful of rolls over a while and decided I like regular silver. Having said that - after shooting as ISO 400 once, I dropped it to ISO 200. I found the negs at 400 to be too thin. I stuck with 200 and liked the results. Maybe it was my camera, who knows.
A couple of years ago I took a class in B&W darkroom work, and asked the instructor what his favorite film was. Without hesitation he said XP2 Super, but said he rated it at 125. He taught the zone system and did formal testing with a densometer. He told me he felt it was the best out there, and as for the ISO 400 rating, he felt Ilford just felt that made it more marketable. (Of course, he also did not shoot XP2 Super, despite liking it, because of archival issues)
So - incomplete, random, and anecdotal evidence.
On a tangential note - I've been experimenting with developing C41 color in traditional B&W developers, and then extracting the silver image by scanning. Produces some interesting results. I should probably try this with XP2 Super - the major problem with the color film is the orange mask, and I'd be curious to see what sort of mask the XP2 comes out when handled (or mishandled) in this manner.
- MCC
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Mark Cassino Photography
Kalamazoo, MI
www.markcassino.com
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Alin Flaider" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Godfrey DiGiorgi" <pentax-discuss@pdml.net>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2005 9:02 AM
Subject: Re[3]: C 41 B&W film
Highlights are compressed at 200 but that's a small price to pay for clean shadows. Originally I was shooting XP2 at 400 ASA as the recommended optimum sensitivity. Darker shadows than 2 EVs then comes out with blotchy, irregular grain. And it's grain all right not just noise introduced by the tone expansion, as it is obvious on the optical prints as well.
Servus, Alin
Godfrey wrote: GD> My experience with XP2 says that you were overexposing it too GD> much at ASA 200, compressing tonal scale quite a lot. I found it GD> best in the range ASA 320 to 640. Going down to 200-250 produces GD> very flat negative: all the highlights are compressed.
GD> Yes, underexposing it creates grainier images.
GD> Compensation for the compressed histogram by scanning to 16bit GD> and then adjusting the gamma curve. It's amazing how much data GD> can be pulled out of a thin negative if you work at it.
