Notes:
Date - August 29, 2020
Camera - Nikon F100
Lenses - AF-NIKKOR 24mm f/2.8D & AF-NIKKOR 35mm f/2D
Film - Ilford XP2 Super 400 (B&W C41)
Developed @ - "Dotwell" PhotoLab
Scanner - Nikon V-ED
Software - Vuescan / NegativeLabPro / Lightroom
Location - Hong Kong (Jordan to Sham Shui Po)
Comment - I ventured off Hong Kong Island for the first time in a while for some street shooting.
Caught the metro to Jordan and spent 5hrs walking through Yau Ma Tei, Mong Kok, Prince Edward and onto Sham Shui Po. The "dark-side." 😱 I'm pretty sure you could shoot in these areas day in, day out for ten years straight and still not run out of stuff to shoot. Very target-rich environments.
I would have preferred to use Tri-X 400 for this sort of street shooting, but XP2 400 Super has a lot of advantages over Tri-X in that it's developed in 30 mins and is a lot easier to scan. Plus, I'm still on the fence about self-developing again and Tri-X 400 is best self-developed.
I ran several tests on the film today and shot it from a full stop over-exposed to one-stop under and everything in between. I read many people shoot this at one stop overexposed @ 200, but the results looked pretty ordinary to me. Too smooth and lifeless. No grain and a big drop in contrast. One full stop under @ 800 looked very contrasty, but the shadows were a blotchy mess. In a pinch, if I needed a faster shutter speed, I'd probably underexpose by a stop just to get the shot, but most likely I'll stick to box speed and shoot this film @ 400.
Apart from being great fun, walking around the streets for 5hrs is pretty good exercise. 5hrs of walking around shooting a couple rolls of films netted me 20,200 steps and 580 calories. Not bad!
Masked Mannequins.
Click to enlarge.
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