I've come back from my backpacking trip with the Intrepid 4x5. For BW I only shot FP4 and also took some 35mm shots on the drive there and back. I rated FP4 at 125 and developed the results in XTOL 1:1 (for both 4x5 and 35mm). The results are...kinda weird?
The first two are 4x5, the second is 35mm. The 35mm one kinda shows what I didn't expect. I took a photo of a mountain stream where the water was darker than the surrounding foliage, though the negative doesn't really show that and I'm not quite sure why? It feels like it's both contrasty but also flat at the same time? The confusing looking 4x5 of the rocks on the left with trees/mountains on the right is actually a mountain lake. The rocks are the shoreline and the trees/mountains is the reflection from the water. Looks super busy and nonsensical of course, but I expected a different tone between the rocks and water.
The photo of the frozen lake and trees with mountains turned out rather well. You can't tell that's a frozen lake as well. I could perhaps dodge/burn that (in the Darkroom or Lightroom) but the overall photo I like. That was the best example.
I made contact prints of the 4x5 (I don't have a 4x5 enlarger yet, boo) and enlarged the 35mm to 5x7 in the darkroom. Those results are better than the scans but still have sort of an odd look. I would have expected more tonality.
Hindsight I should have brought some Delta or TMAX 100 to compare but I was trying to keep things simple. I got some decent results overall, but yeah a little confused as to what may be going on. Should I perhaps pull the film next time? Try something other than XTOL (I liked it for the economy/film speed/environmental reasons)? HP5 would have been my other choice but I'm looking for a solid medium speed film to use.
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