Jukebox

I shot a roll of HP5+ during a trip to London recently. I knew that my only opportunity for photography would be during the journey from the station to my meeting (and back again) and, as a chunk of this would be on the London Underground, I knew that I’d need a fairly high ASA film to cope with the low light if I took any photos there.

My options were to either use some Kodak Tmax P3200, Ilford Delta 3200, or to push a slower film. As HP5+ is my favourite film anyway, and knowing that it reacts well to push-processing (after all, the canister has 1600asa as one of the choices for processing), I decided to got with the Ilford classic.

I was slightly concerned about the metering on my OM-1 – while the camera has had a voltage conversion carried out so that it can meter correctly with 1.55v batteries, the only cells I have are alkaline, and those tend to lose voltage over their lifespan, throwing the metering gradually out of whack (unlike silver-oxide cells, which keep their voltage constant until they die all at once). Still, HP5+ is a very forgiving film, so I decided to take my chances.

As it turned out I needn’t have been concerned – all the shots (apart from one that was slightly bright and had some shake – probably as a result of a dodgy camera operator!) were nicely exposed and look great. I’ll be posting a selection in the coming days, but for now here’s a guy choosing songs on a jukebox at the station.

Olympus OM-1, F.Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 & Ilford HP5+ (@1600).

Taken on 19 February 2020