My experience with XP2 says that you were overexposing it too
much at ASA 200, compressing tonal scale quite a lot. I found it
best in the range ASA 320 to 640. Going down to 200-250 produces
very flat negative: all the highlights are compressed.
Yes, underexposing it creates grainier images.
Compensation for the compressed histogram by scanning to 16bit
and then adjusting the gamma curve. It's amazing how much data
can be pulled out of a thin negative if you work at it.
Godfrey
--- Alin Flaider <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I have quite some experience with XP2 Super (bought a couple
> of bulk
> rolls so I had to use them all! :oT ) and I didn't quite
> reach the
> same conclusion.
> XP2 has indeed very large exposure latitude but it does so
> at the
> expense of grain and tone compression. I initially bought it
> for
> concert shooting and ended up with outdoors use of up to 200
> ASA. It
> doesn't scan very well either: it yields a very compressed
> histogram
> that barely allows a couple of processing steps before the
> noise
> builds up, even in 16 bit BW. Delta 100 and even the
> contrasty APX
> 100 and 400 deliver much cleaner, large histogram scans that
> are
> more suitable for post processing.
> That said, once I got used with its limitations it delivered
> some
> nice results, so I guess I can confirm the consistency. ;o)
> Tough, in-house traditional BW processing is very accessible
> and the
> results can easily exceed camera/lenses/scanner performance;
> also
> with just a bit of practice one can get the same level of
> consistency as with C41. At least now that I gave up to E6
> processing I'm beginning to rediscover the virtues of true
> BW
> emulsions...
>
> Servus, Alin
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