I adore Ilford FP4+. You’d be hard pressed to convince me there’s a better black and white film out there. However its box speed of ISO 125 is a little… limiting even on a good day in Scotland.
I was out in Glasgow in February 2019 with my then new-to-me Olympus OM-2n and a roll of FP4+. It was a really gloomy day (when is it not in February in Scotland) so I wasn’t expecting much. I had previously pushed FP4+ a little bit before (the highest being 400, +1⅔ stops) and loved the results, so I thought since I had nothing to lose that day I said “go big or go home” and cranked the camera’s meter up to 500.
I’ve not seen much discussion online of people pushing FP4+ this far - it’s almost like a number as big as 500 scares some off when compared with the box speed of 125, or that a two stop push is perhaps a step too far with a lower speed film. Either way, it doesn’t seem to have as much of a reputation for pushing compared with the likes of HP5+.
I was over the moon with the results the first time I saw them. At 500, FP4+ gets all moody and contrasty, without getting too grainy or completely clipping all of the shadow detail. The shadows may be dark but there is a surprising amount of detail you can still recover from them! Some careful metering lightens them up a bit more. It reminds me a bit of Ilford’s Delta 400 if it wasn’t so fine grained, or pushed Kodak Tri-X without the extra grain. If you’ve not tried it yet, you’re missing out!
This roll happens to feature some of my personal favourite shots, which can be seen below.
The film was developed by AG Photolab, who at the time I believe were using Ilford DD as their developer. I’ve since tried it myself in Ilfotec HC 1:31 for ~10m30s at 20℃ and had similar punchy results.
(Click on the images below to see them in full!)
