Recently I have been ploughing through over four years worth of imagery to edit and compile for a portfolio website (eventually this will happen, said the photographer with a blog!). One thing that struck me was the apparent change in the quality of the black and white imagery – in the film capabilities, not what or how I was photographing. In particular, the quality of grain appearance seems to have dropped slightly from its once warm appealing nature. As the bulk of my work has been monochromatic I decided to research this a little more.

I always shoot with Ilford either FP4, HP5, or more preferably with their Delta. During the time span of the work, Ilford fell into liquidation but were thankfully saved. This was good news, but I noticed a slight drop in quality of the film when it was manufactured in a different location. This could just be me, but it didn’t push so well, and the warmer grain less evident. I must add also that it’s handling of contrast dropped marginally also, in both manually spot metered work and automatically metered imagery. One of the reasons I have looked into this, is because I recently did some portraits of Marta on 400asa Delta and I found myself looking back at my work and thinking I want that grain again! After a long discussion, a very helpful chap at Sid and Janes Cameras in Warwick gave me the contact number of a place in Birmingham that might help, but alas I called them and they no longer offered this service. So I contacted many labs in the UK who specialise in Black and White dev and printing to see if someone could hand develop the rolls in some specialist chemistry for me. The search was in vain. Metro, the top lab in London don’t hand dev anymore. So I emailed The Vault – again no joy, but they did advise I contact Darkside. I found their website and to my joy there was listed in the developing services that specialist chemicals could be used on request, so I called them. Nope. We don’t hand dev anymore mate.

As much as this was an unproductive exercise, I did take the time to enquire what chemistry they used for their machine development – to my surprise most were using D76 chemistry, which to the strangers of this subject, is Kodak (who have all but dropped out of the specialist film market). Not only this, but it is bulk, general, all round chemistry for black and white development. Furthermore, Ilford design their films to work with their own chemistry so a budding b/w snapper may be unsuspectingly not getting the best out their Ilford films.

So I was left with two options – start rating the film higher than it is and continue to use my local lab, which thankfully still use Ilford chemistry (ID11) or, buy the kit, convert my bathroom and do it myself. Aaah, those long college days in the foetal warmth of a darkroom – unbeatable watching your shots come alive before your eyes!!