Underground 3: retakes on HP5+

The aim was noble I think. To retake underground 1 and 2 shots on film. I would necessarily need to expose either slow film using a tripod (anathema to me, and permission would be required from the museum) or use a fast film hand held at slowish shutter speeds. I chose the latter and picked HP5+ to be stand developed in Rodinal – stand developing being a compensating process allowing the underexposed areas to be developed for longer while controlling the development of the highlights giving a full tonal scale. Or so the story goes.

I should add 400asa and I have a history together. It’s over 50 years since I used high speed film regularly – and that was to photograph meteors. Times after that when I used 400asa film I can only say I disliked the results. And still do. And the results of the retakes have done nothing to change my mind. I don’t like fast film. Got that?

I retook images using a Leica MP, incident light metering, the same 50mm Zeiss Sonnar as in the previous articles but just for fun I also took along my Voigtlander 15mm f4.5 lens. Yes, f4.5. With the Sonnar at f2 and exposing at box speed exposure time was generally 1/30 to 1/15 of a second. F4.5 you say? Yes, exposures generally 1/8 to ¼ second. Bear in mind the 15mm focal length can be handheld easily to give sharp images at 1/15 second, so for both lenses I’m only talking about 1 to 2 stops longer exposure than that. It puzzles me that digital photographers with 5 stops of image stabilisation sometimes take snapshots using a tripod in bright sunshine – what the hell are they doing? Sorry, I’m in a grumpy mood today.

Film was scanned on a Sony A7Riii and Sigma 105mm macro lens. I tried rescanning with different setting to get as much from the highlights as possible – with limited success. It will be interesting to see how wet process prints cope.

The underground remains of the palace are far more extensive than the sewer tour – the latter being essentially just a short walk by the underground river and another short walk over a main sewer, while the palace offers the opportunity to get lost at least on a first visit.

I’ve probably made it clear that I’m not happy with the results on HP5+, primarily because of the blown highlights which you probably noticed, let alone the post-apocalyptic grain. Pyro developer would have handled both better at the cost of another one or two stops exposure and the need for a tripod. Had I taken that route I would have also chosen FP4+ film instead.

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