For the bulk of my b/w work, it's a 60/40 mix of XP2 and HP5: in XP2's favor, of course, is the convenience factor in terms of processing (bring to any place that handles C41, but try and be a bit choosy with your labs), and, since I do all my own printing (digitally, with the occasional wet print thrown in), I don't have to worry about color casts in my prints since, in my workflow, there aren't any. The film also posesses a fairly elastic exposure index (expose from as low as EI 50 to as high as EI 800, without altering processing times; depending on whom you ask, the "sweet spot" seems to be anywhere from EI 200-320). I've shot a lot of this stuff for a number of years, and it is one of my three "go-to" emulsions (the other two being Kodak Portra 160NC and Fuji Press 400/800).
As conventional b/w emulsions go, it's really hard to fault HP5: depending on your confort level with using different developers, this film can do just about anything you ask of it. There are exceptions, of course, but these depend on your expectations and experience (and, in some cases, how fast your lanses are). I rate exposure at EI 320 and process in HC-110.
And, of course, there's always Tri-X, which also has its strengths. A fellow photographer I know, who has used HP5 as his mainstay for at least a decade, recently switched to Tri-X; for what it's worth, he did this after having abandoned film entirely for digital, learned a lot in the process, then ditched the digital gear a year later and returned to film. You can draw your own conclusions from this.🙂
- Barrett
