Film photo walk in London

One weekend I was staying in London I decided to do some street photography, primarily around Camden, Leicester square, and Chinatown.

At the time I was almost exclusively shooting film. I had my Nikon FE2 and F-301 loaded with black and white film. My FE2 had a roll of ilford hp5 in it and the F-301 had a roll of the same film but pushed one stop to 800. The Nikon 50mm 1.8D was the lens used on both cameras.

I love walking around a city, even without a camera, just observing & people watching. Big European cities are the best for this in my opinion and in a city with as much going on as London I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to do some street photography.

My first stop was in Camden, I took a few photos around the tube station amongst the morning hustle before walking on to the market around Camden locks. Camden market is a well known market in London that started in the 1970s. It's a great place to walk around and find interesting scenes to photograph. There are a variety of stuff on offer at the market but I wanted to check out the food. There are usually great Spanish paella on offer at most London markets, this day in Camden was no different.

Why these cameras and this film stock. As previously mentioned, I was predominantly a film user when I took these pictures. The FE2 and F-301 are both great options for carrying around on the street for longer periods. The FE2 is light and the F-301 has a comfortable grip. This was the first time I'd used Hp5 and I wanted to test out what it looked like at box speed versus pushed once in development. I thought this was a good opportunity to test out the same film stock, with the same lens, in the same conditions/location.

For the most part I'd stuck to Tri-x for my black and white film but in England that was very expensive or not available at all. I went with what I was told was the closest Ilford equivalent. I think my results from it look much different and are higher contrast than what I get out of Tri-x. That isn't a bad thing or good thing I just wouldn't say one is equivalent. I really like the results I got with Hp5 for street photography but I think there is another Ilford film that is a closer alternative to Kodak Tri-x but maybe that is a topic for a future blog post.

After Camden I went to Chinatown to look for something else to eat. Chinatown in London is located next to Leicester square and was one of my favorite places to go out in the city. Chinatown has great places to get an excellent meal at a reasonable price, which is something to be noted in London. Also around the corner is the iconic Prince Charles cinema, a great place to watch a classic movie you always wanted to see on the big screen.

After hanging around and eating mooncakes I think that it was time to call it a day. What did I think of my first use of Ilford hp5? It can be contrasty and gritty especially when pushed in development. This is the kind of film I'd like to use more in portraiture for its gritty, and high contrast, look.

There are lots of great areas in London to make street photos, almost everywhere has something interesting going on. But these areas were some of my favorite places to hang out and people watch while I was staying in London. It made sense to spend some time hanging around with a camera.

Ilford HP5 pushed to 800 versus boxed speed? The difference is subtle. If you look closely, at the Trafalgar Square picture in particular, there is slightly more prominent grain. If I was after a particularly high grain look when using HP5 in the future I would consider pushing 2 stops to 1600.

These pictures were developed in Xtol if that information interests any readers. This is considered quite a fine grain developer, I'm sure other developers would result in higher grain. Take that into consideration when assessing how many stops you want to push your HP5.