ILFORD HP5 PLUS 400

As I mentioned in a previous gallery (Kodak Gold 200 - Roll 19 for 120 Medium Format Film) I had purchased a crate of cameras. One of which was the Minolta X-300 in which all the images above were shot on. This was only really a test roll to see if the camera was functional beyond just firing the shutter. I decided to go to Exmouth for the first part of this roll and then we headed to Exeter where we both met another one of my friends.

I think I kind of knew that the camera would be functional but I wanted to test it anyway and so that’s what I did. I left the camera in Auto mode to test the Light Meter, although my aperture didn’t change much during this roll, most of these images you see above were exposed perfectly fine. There were of course an odd number of frames that were poorly exposed but that’s to be expected. You can’t rely on any camera really to give you the perfect exposure each and every time.

Now with this camera I wasn’t expecting jaw dropping images. They aren’t perfect and the camera definitely isn’t the perfect camera but it has its uses in my inventory. For starters, I can throw this camera around and expect it to be perfectly fine. Of coarse it doesn’t feel like a premium camera when held in your hands but at least I can rest easy knowing if something did happen to it then I wouldn’t be out of pocket. I can either buy a new one or buy a similar one without having to worry about my finances for the rest of the month.

The camera has a surprisingly good light meter as I had discussed earlier. 9 times out of ten, it will give me the correct image. It does have manual as well but when I use this camera I usually rely on its Auto mode for easy and relaxing shooting. Not everything has to be slow and deliberate. I know it’s film but not everything has to be fully manual all the time. I do like using this camera but whenever I come across a similar one now, I really do just try to avoid them most of the time because I have too many similar cameras that all do the same thing.

My parents always complain and ask me why I need so many cameras. "Why have multiple if they all do the same things?" But there is a good reason why one would want to own multiple. There’s the fact that cameras do break. At some point they will all acquire issues. If you only have one, then you wont be able to photograph until you either get it fixed or when you purchase a new one. There’s also the fact that you can shoot multiple film stocks at once. I can have a B&W film stock such as this in my Minolta whist I can have a Colour film stock in my Contax. Lenses are another thing. You cant really pair a Minolta Lens with an Olympus camera or an Olympus lens with a Minolta camera. You can’t use a Contax/Yashica Lens with a Leica. By owning multiple camera (usually different ones) you can open yourself up to a wider range of lenses. Some lenses are more expensive than others so it’s good to have options.

Another thing is tests. You could compare Ilford HP5 Plus to Ilford FP4 Plus and see the differences between the two cameras or the two film stocks. If you’re shooting let’s say, a 36 exposure roll of each different film stock then that’s a lot of images. Okay sure you could shoot one roll and then come back at a later date and shoot the same things with the other film stock but the problem with this is the conditions are most likely to change so you wont get accurate results and you will have forgotten what you shot entirely, but being able to use two camera at the same time, you could take both images at the same time without waiting. If you have two of the same camera then this is great and if you have two completely different cameras you could test in such a way where you can see which camera performs better.

But anyways, enough about that, let’s move on and back to the photos at hand. All in all I think I do quite like these images, they came out quite nice and sharp and well exposed and I would say that it is a test well done.