Sunday, April 19, 2009

The end of Woolworth's in the UK & Ilford XP2


Nikon FE 24mm/Nikkor
Ilford XP2

It is hard to listen to the radio or television for any longer than fifteen minutes before you hear the word credit crunch.

Its all doom and gloom greedy bankers and redundancies.


One of first big visible victims of this credit crunch on the high street was Woolworth's, every town of any size in this country probably had a Woolworth's.

In the last 10 years I have probably bought two things from Woolworth's and its demise will not affect me a great deal.

I have Friends who will really miss Woolworth's and would be in there twice a week.


I continue document the world around me and took this frame in the last 15 minutes of my local Woolworth's.

Some retailers and organisations are very sensitive to photography inside there stores.
Not wishing to be confronted by store security and possibly loosing my Nikon and my new to me 24mm Nikkor I took this grab shot.


The film I used is Ilford XP2



This is a chromeogenic B&W film, basically its a colour film that has just black dye couplers.

It is processed in the standard C41 colour process which means you can get you film processed and printed quickly at a mini lab.

If you make your prints (Wet prints) in a traditional B&W dark room this film is optimised for this process.


One of the most useful features of this film is the enormous exposure latitude.

You can expose if from ISO50 to ISO3200 on the same roll and you will get a good print.

Ilford recommend you expose the film at ISO400 but if you over expose the film you get extremely fine grain and good shadow detail above iso 400 you will get higher contrast a loss of shadow detail and more grain.

So you are almost guaranteed to get a negative from which you can obtain a good print, just what you need for grab shots under mixed light and a guesstimated exposure.


I personally much prefer conventional B&W film but XP2 is ideal in difficult light when all you need is a print.



Contax IIa

Un-Coated Zeiss Sonnar 50mm/f1.5 + Lens hood


This is outdated AGFA APX400 Shot with a very old Contax II.
The low contrast of the film and the lens combined with the grain of the film add to the gloom..