I got my first roll back of Ilford XP2 back from development. My overall impression of it is pretty good - the grain is pretty light for ISO 400 (at least my memory of what ISO 400 was). It's not as contrasty as I normally like, and I bumped the contrast up slightly before posting them, but it's not that bad. The dynamic range is pretty decent, and the only shots that it struggled with were taken outside in the sun. All in all, I'm impressed enough that I'll give it another go. Kris Krug snapped a few of these, so check out the actual flickr site for more info. ...

Today after work I dropped off my first roll of film to be developed. It was a 36 shot roll of Ilford XP2, and it's probably the only black and white roll I've ever shot in my entire life, now that I think about it. The neat thing about this roll is that you can develop it in C41 chemistry (used for colour print film), which means you can basically get it developed anywhere in the city for next to nothing. I also have a few rolls of pure black and white to shoot, so I think it will be a useful comparison. I asked the ladies down at Custom Colour if the XP2 was noticeably different than the pure ...

Tonight I did something that I've been thinking of doing for a few weeks now -- I picked up a film SLR body so that I could once again shoot film. And to even write that statement down now seems a bit weird, since I left the world of film years ago, thinking I would never ever shoot a roll of film again in my life. However, a lot of friends of mine who are into photography have started dabbling once again in the forbidden art, and it has caused me to take it seriously once again. I have no idea if it will last long with me, but it's definitely cool enough to keep me entertained for a few months ...

So, I gotta hand it to my pal Kris -- he's managed to get me interested in something I never thought I'd be interested in again -- film photography. Kris is a really awesome fashion photographer here in Vancouver, and his stuff never ceases to amaze me. What's interesting about Kris, and a variety of the local photographers I've met recently, is that they have started shooting film again. Which is sort of surprising, given the focus local photography shops seem to place on digital nowadays (I called several local stores recently to talk about film, and most of them didn't even have film cameras ...