London Calling

In 2019 Ilford released Ortho 80 on 35mm and 120 film. I happened to be in London at the time and visited Mr Cad in Pimlico (I highly recommend Mr Cad, the shop is a treasure trove of all thing film related!)

I immediately left and wandered around the area with the Ortho 80 loaded up in my OM10.

I finished the roll and it sat in my camera for a while before I eventually made a contact sheet and found a couple of images I really liked. Bascially COVID happened in March 2020 and I had a fair bit of time to kill!

If there is something we can learn immediately its that when rated for ISO 80, I blew out the sky big time. I used Ilfosol 3 and would have used whatever time was on the Massive Dev chart (Mistake, ALWAYS do your own development testing).

After studying the contact sheet, frame 16 really stood out to me and I thought it might be a nice challenge to get a good print.

If there is one thing that jumps out about this film immediately is that it is contrasty. The blacks are nice and there are some pleasing greys in there but BAM does it really seem to blow out them highlights! Of course this could be because at the time I had no idea about film testing and developing beyond “Buy developer in shop, read packet” and I have been thinking of trying it out again but this time with some proper tests to maximise the film’s potential.

I’ll probably look to print a couple more up now that time has passed and I’m not emotionally attached to any one image. I’ll also be printing on much smaller paper. In 2019/2020 I was printing on almost exclusively 9.5×12 paper because I apparently liked to like the high life. I have 2 kids and a mortgage, so nothing except a final print will get printed that large. Even then it would have to be pretty damned special!

Which frame do you like and think I should attempt?

Below are a few more printed in 2025.