XP1 vs XP2 Development

Yesterday I was speaking with a tech at a local processing lab about

Ilford XP chromogenic black & white film and processing. I have most

of a brick of 120 XP1 in the fridge that has sat unused for some

years. Several rolls recently shot and run through his lab show lower

than expected contrast and density. I used to soup this stuff myself

in Ilford's XP1 chemistry kit, and indeed I still have an 84oz kit in

the darkroom... I've been away from B&W for a while!

 

The tech's answer was that the XP1 chemistry gave the film "normal"

contrast and density, but that Ilford found most users sent XP1 to the

local C41 lab, which resulted in lower contrast & density.

 

So, he says, Ilford changed the film to be more compatible with

standard C41, this result being XP2. So, my results with XP2 should be

better, given lab processing.

 

The question is how then to handle the XP1 I have on hand... I see no

XP1 chemicals on Ilford's web site. What would be the best

alternative? Push processing at the lab? Push it myself with Unicolor

kit? Is there a dose of developer additive perhaps that would do

better than adding developement time?

 

Thanks for any corrected info and suggestions!

Just a caution, I don't know how much to put down to my processing technique, water conditions, etcetera, but:

 

I've scanned 10~ rolls of xp1, exposed and processed in the mid 80's and found it doesn't stand the test of time that well. All of it has strong pink/magenta tinge, seems to be fading, and is infested with a combination of crystaline edged splotches and moldy/scuddy flecks.

My C-41 developed XP1 from the mid 80s has also faded to almost nothing and is no longer printable. Some very memorable pictures are gone forever. Because of this I hesitate to try any chromogenic black and white film!

The XP-1 developer was C-41 developer used 1:1 to get a longer development time so that temperature, pouring, timing and agitation errors in hand tanks wouldn't be as much of a factor as otherwise. You could "properly" develop C-41 color film in it.

 

Anyway, I think your XP-1 is so old that even with refrigeration it's appreciably aged; I wouldn't bother with it other than for play. Extend the development time (in C-41) or raise the temperature.

This is going to be a very unusal suggestion; however, several years ago I had a student who developed some film using HC110 solution B and the negatives looked sooooooooo strange. After trouble shooting we discovered he had used XP1 film and developed them in black and white chemistry. I thought why not see what happens, they were printable. To be honest I don't remember the quality of the images , but there was image, and it was printable. You may need to use a grade 1 paper, or VC with low contrast has it will have a strong masking effect from the developer.

Contrary to others experience, my home-processed XP1 negs still look as good as the day the were dev'd ... maybe my wash-times were longer ;-)

 

I don't remember which C41 chemicals I used, (not Ilford), but I do remember that the recommended dev time was 4 minutes at 100F (38C), as opposed to the 3m 15s for a "normal" colour film.

 

Home-processing of b&w C41 film isn't as fraught as colour film, as there's no problem with colour shift ... a few degrees either way, with the recommended changes in processing times, gives very acceptable results.

 

Not sure if I'd have much faith in your original XP1 chemicals, however. My experience with long-term storage of unopened C41 chemicals is that they do deteriorate significantly more than similarly stored (cool and dark) conventional b&w dev.

Someone recently told me that Ilford's original instructions for processing XP1 with the XP1 kit contained an error - showing fixing times that were too short. They later corrected the information.

 

Perhaps the image degradation that some of you have seen is due to inadequate fixing?

Here's a sample. If I've inadequately fixed, would re-fixing be of any benefit after so many years? I could try a strip. I'm contemplating getting ice-enabled scanner to redo these. It being chromegenic film I believe it would work. Any comments on ice or the crud on this sample? Not too evident here, but quite prevalent are large mottled areas.

 

Gentlemen, I give you... the ICE poster child:

The simplest answer is just to downrate the XP1 and expose it at, say, 250 ASA or whatever. How important is the speed of the film? I use XP2 occasionally for difficult lighting conditions where its latitude is useful. I also like it for portraiture. But for work which I might want to print twenty years into the future I stick to conventional b+w film.

The free!! Polaroid plug-in <A HREF="http://www.polaroid.com/service/software/poladsr/poladsr.html">Dust and Scratch Removal</A> will get rid of all the white dots for you, the drying mark will need a bit of manual intervention.

that just looks like bad processing or a water mark to me....I've seen some XP1 that's about a decade old, that's faded, but it's resulted in a change of density. You say you have "moldy" specks--but this to me says bad storage, not a fault of the film itself. There isn't a film stock on earth that wiill survive heat or humidity....chromogenic films would want to be kept as cool/cold and dry as possible. RH above 65% is the point where mold can set in, and once this happens your pretty much out of luck...even a film like HP5 or TX (roll films) will deteriorate rather quickly when the temps & humidity get up there....so you have to kind of put it in perspective--if there really is mold in the emulsion, this has nothing to do with the fact that the film is chromogenic....the other culprit could be bad negative sleeves or notebook pages. If you used a page with a slip agent in it, that additive can transfer over to film in weird patterns that can't be removed. Heat, humidity and pressure on the pages make this problem worse as well.

 

If it were me, I'd run a test through C41 with that film, or shoot it in toy cameras or pinholes...I still have some XP1 4x5 that I do this with....you can cross process that stuff in E6, if you rate it at 50 EI or so....

Hi-- thanks for the helpful comments so far! As to the longevity issue, I�ve just checked my oldest XP1 negs, dating to summer of 1981, and they look ok, no fungus! Actually, the first two rolls were exposed at EI=400 and were lab-processed so they are a bit on the thin side and have a slight yellow cast, very much like the recent XP1 that was also lab-processed.

 

The subsequent 80 or so rolls dating from early 1982 through late 1984 were all exposed at EI=250 and processed in XP1 chemicals. These have the slight pinkish cast typical of XP1 process and greater density and contrast. All negs have been stored in clear PrintFile pages in binders in warm/dry conditions, and like Chris�s all look well-preserved! But I have not tried to print or scan these older negs...

 

Mendel and Gregory, I am curious about the processing of your deteriorating film... commercial C41 or home-darkroom C41 or XP1? Possibility of blix problem or insufficient wash time? Sorry to hear of problems; I know I�d hate to lose negs like that!

 

John, your comment about XP1 developer being C41 diluted 1:1 is interesting! Certainly the usual C41 development for 3.25 min at 100 degF is awfully short, though I�ve done it. Ilford�s standard development is for 5 min at 100 deg, though they offer a usable range of 4.5 min to 7.5 min. I see in my notes that I often developed for 6 or 7 minutes when subject contrast was low. Would diluting the C41 developer 1:1 (say, Unicolor�s kit) then give about the same results as Ilford�s XP1 kit?

 

Chris, the suggestion for 4 min at 100 degF for XP1 in C41 was from your C41 chemistry kit�s instructions? And which kit was that? My old XP1 84 oz. chemical kit must date to Fall 1984. The instructions give a 12-month shelf-life for unopened bottles, and I�m not certain mine is unopened. At this point I consider that kit a collector�s item!

 

I have some XP2 Super. I shot a roll of this last year at my habitual EI=250, processed at the local lab, and the results were surprisingly dense. No yellowish cast, instead the same slight magenta tint as XP1 souped in XP1 chemistry. Unexposed areas have about the same base+fog density as the recently processed old XP1, just eyeballing it side by side. That�s encouraging!

 

I�ll take DK�s suggestion to run a test: Successive rolls of XP2 and XP1 in the same camera for the same subject matter, and ask that the XP1 be given push processing. Maybe EI=400 for both?

Mendel, in your Poster Child, I see dark spots concentrated along the lower boundary of the water mark... Is it possible this is simply dust/dirt in the wash dried in place? Is it certain the spots appeared later? It�s possible re-washing might help. In studying the film-scanner issue myself, I think you�re right that the chromogenic B&W films are helped by the ICE feature equally well, as like color negs the image is composed of dye clouds.

Doug, I'm not sure I see these concentrated dark spots along lower edge. Bear in mind, this is reversed image, dirt spots will appear light. Also, this is landscape image, it would have hung to dry rotated 90 degrees, clockwise in my case. Also, the only things appearing dark would be holes in the emulsion and the like. There are a few dark spots around his drawstring. This full res., 800x640 crop is from 2820 dpi scan, measuring 3800x2533. These "pools" appear roll after roll. Mottling comes and goes, as well.

 

The chemicals I used were Ilford, the rectangular white bottles. I am fairly careful with my times, and would tend to over fix and wash, rather than under. I believe this stuff "grew" over the years, but not sure. Having looked at a lot of it, close up, I'm under the impression it's crystaline. The film was sleeved in Vue-All Proof file. I noticed they were sticking a fair bit when I first got them out. All of it is very thin looking, magenta pink. I believe this really a case where Vuescan is making silk purse out of sow's ear. Tri-X in same binder, but mostly in Print File Negative Preserver pages, were fine, albeit somewhat dusty, and some bad scratches form my sloppy technique with enlarger.

 

The example I posted could be easily, but laboriously, cleaned in photoshop, I'm sure. The isolated spots are perfect targets for History Brush sourcing from Dust and Scratch treated snapshot, and Healing Brush and Clone Stamp can take care of the pools. This is how I'm adressing about 45 rolls of Tri-X. I'm actually doing the cleanup on the Vuescan Raw File, with special viewing mode. But, this XP1 is really TRYING, it's wall to wall, image after image, bad news. And since it's cromegenic, it's some consulation that I SHOULD be able to try ICE on it.

 

I suspect re-washing will not remove this stuff, I've tried re-washing one really bad strip of Tri-X, and nothing budged.

 

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, and I appreciate I'm totally off topic. Regarding your question, that's a heck of a lot of film in your fridge, but still, I'd be tempted to just close the eyes and give it the heave-ho, then pick up some fresh, with new chemicals. The image is the important thing, the material is secondary.

>>"Chris, the suggestion for 4 min at 100 degF for XP1 in C41 was from your C41 chemistry kit�s instructions? And which kit was that? "

 

I'm not 100% sure, the name "Photocolor" rings a bell. I do remember the chemicals came with a little bottle of additive for use when processing prints. I dropped out of colour processing at home for about 10 years and have only just recently got back into it. My current C-41 chemicals are from Jessops (own brand) and I wasn't suprised when I read the 4min recommendation for XP2, as I was familiar with it from before.

 

At a guess, XP1/2 are single-layer films, as opposed to the triple-layer of a conventional colour film, so need a bit of contrast boost from the longer dev time.

 

Interestingly, I see the "new" Fuji chromogenic has been developed in conjunction with Ilford !!

 

Do try the Polaroid plug-in I recommended in an above posting, it really is VERY good, and a lot quicker than waiting for my Canon FS4000 to do an i/r scan.

Maybe it works in diafine?

http://www.grantheffernan.com/misc/diafine.html

 

If yours is old, and you've got some diafine around, it would be a fun experiment anyway, despite the less than glowing results reported from xp2 on the link above.

> development is for 5 min at 100 deg, though they offer a usable range of 4.5 min to 7.5 min. I see in my notes that I often developed for 6 or 7 minutes when subject contrast was low.

 

I treated it like a "standard" film and developer, giving a little more time for zip and for pushing. I don't recall ever needing to reduce the time.

 

> Would diluting the C41 developer 1:1 (say, Unicolor�s kit) then give about the same results as Ilford�s XP1 kit?

 

I think it would, although I never tried it. According to Barry Sinclair of Ilford (way back then), in addition to reducing the timing errors the diluted developer used with intermittent agitation would give negs with a bit higher acutance than C-41 machine processing. I believe it did, but the difference was rather subtle.

 

BTW, although I haven't used much of it, I believe XP-2 is somewhat faster than the old XP-1, which was really best at around EI 200.

At the risk of irritating manufacturers.... the sleeves you mention have slip agents in them. the only notebook style sleeves on the market, as far as I know, that don't have slip agents are the high density polyethylene (HDPE) sleeves that Light Impressions sells. They look like opaque, sort of frosted in a way. The low-density polyethylene, and polypropylene type pages, and some tube sleeves--not all though--have slip agents added to the plastic during manufacture. This additive keeps the plastic from binding on the extrusion machines.In it's raw form, the plastics are considered safe. The ad copy can claim to be "archival"--but nothing is archival because nothing really lasts forever...it's all pretty relative. your XP1 negs could be kept frozen in some underground vault and would outlast all the negs out in room temp. They could last thousands of years...while all your tri-x and fiber prints turned to dust. The problem with the advertising of those pages is that it's just that--ad copy. The tests they do to determine the use of whatever enclosure materials are actually safe for long term storage is called the Photographic Activity Test. PAT, it's an ANSI/ISO test for chemical reactivity used mostly for paper enclosures. Some of those pages pass the PAT because they don't cause stains to the film, but with the plastic sleeves, they can get destroyed in the test itself. The test doesn't cover physical damage that might occur, like a page sticking. The organizations that do these independent tests, can do tests for "blocking"--this is the sleeve sticking to the item enclosed. The manufacturers submit the materials to be tested and it's all confidential--some of the companies like LI etc., make the results available--if you look in their catalogs under certain items, like truecore boxboard etc., you'll see the PAT notation...so buyer beware...

 

If you have to use those pages, best way is to sleeve the film with Mylar D fold-locks or uncoated polypropylene, top-load/locking sleeves--then put them into the oversized pages. Some of those companies make pages like this. If you don't do that, then keep them as cool, dry and without pressure on them as possible. Otherwise, if you encounter the film sticking to a page, with an oily/waxy type substance, even if the product is claimed to be "archival"...it's probably the plastic. The times I've seen this, it looked like a waxy impression of an amoeba on the surface of the film. you couldn't get it off, it printed through as density. you could see the pages sticking the negs in the pattern.

 

my opinions only/not my employers.

ive come across an unopened ilford xp1400 chemistry kit. as i am just setting up my first darkroom, should i get some xp2 film and do test developing with it? are the chances better that the chemicals are dead or is the kit even something someone else would especially be interested in? any suggestions where to go from here? thanks!

-chris