This is a special Tuesday black and white for me, because sometimes when you want to move forward you have to look to your past.   Since my return to film, I’ve been searching for different stocks that I’d like to use on a regular basis, and I decided to buy some film that I’ve come in contact with once before, when I was 15 years old and didn’t know any better.

It was 1992, I was taking my first ever photography class.  Our teacher was starting us out on the basics: black and white.  He told everyone to go out and buy some black and white film for our first assignment.  Me, not knowing anything, went down to Wolf Camera and purchased a roll of Ilford Xp2 (not knowing that it wasn’t traditional black and white film).  I was so disappointed when some of my more knowledgable classmates told me that I couldn’t develop the film in class because it used color chemicals.  I threw the roll in a drawer at home, bought some Tmax, and went on my way.  I don’t know what ever happened to that roll, but I never touched Xp2 again….that is until now.

I purchased 3 rolls of XP2 so that I could test it out, because I’m looking for some black and white film in 120, and a current favorite of mine right now, Kodak BWC400cn, is sadly no longer available in 120 (I did manage to get my hands on a fresh pro-pack with an expiration date of this year!)

However Ilford Xp-2 is readly available in 120!

I think that I’ll be shooting more of this film in the future!