Bill Smith's Photography

  P30 is an 80 ISO black and white motion picture stock made famous by the Italian filmmaker Fredirico Fellini and was revived by Film Ferrania a few years ago. Joining Eastman XX and ORWO UN 54 and N74 on the market P30 was marketed towards savvy film photographers looking for a black and white stock to shoot with.  Unlike the American and German options, P30 can be a tricky film to shoot with its narrower latitude, while I love the results, it's not my favourite medium speed film to shoot with. It took me a while to dial things in with the regular production P30, you want to use D96 ideally for processing, failing that,  D76/ID-11 does the trick as well. I found HC110 B was great for the Alpha rolls of P30 but not regular production, things got way too contrasty. The other thing you have to be mindful of is the agitation, as in be gentle, I went with three gentle inversions per minute with D76 1+1.  The other thing, use a camera with an accurate meter and shutter, ...

 The Halton Radial Railway Museum is a lovely place to visit. The only downside for photographers, most of the exhibits are indoors in dimly lit barns. The obvious workaround is either shoot with Ilford Delta 3200 or Kodak Tmax P3200, alternately take the route I did, push Ilford HP5 to 1600 and shoot with a moderately wide angle lens (35 F2 AF-D) and set the camera onto Matrix Metering to get the exposure right.  Camera: Nikon F90X, AF-D 35 F2 lens.  Film: Ilford HP5 400 pushed to 1600, Ilfotec HC 1+31.