Ilford XP2 is a fast, sharp, and fine grain black and white film that can be processed with C41. It is one of the most popular black and white film stocks, along side with Ilford HP5. While some may dub this film as not a true "black and white film", it is cheap and accessible, at around 13 sgd per roll, and is suitable for shooting any subject. Its speed rating of ISO 400 also allows a wide range of options for locations.
My favourite photo shot in this roll.
This roll was shot on my Canon AE1, which was bought from Filem ( a SG film shop) . The camera was delivered and wrapped nicely, while the staff were friendly. However, it was weird that their online credit card system did not work, and they only accepted Paylah, even for large amounts of money.
These photos were shot at Haji Lane @ Bugis, which was relatively crowded on a regular Sunday.
This was my first attempt at street photography, and I was afraid of going up close to strangers, thus I was glad I had my zoom lens (70mm) with me, which allowed me to shoot from afar, although I spent quite some time pretending to shoot at something else ( a common scenario for street photographers who do not wish to be scolded) , and some good shots were missed when I had to spend time adjusting my focus.
Although it is recommended to set manual aperture to learn how to take better photos, I find that shooting street photography at auto aperture mode is more practical, as many good shots pass by in a second and there would be a lack of time to actually adjust the focus and aperture. A couple of my shots were taken when I did not have time to even adjust my focus fully, as the subject was moving too fast, which led to blurriness. For this entire roll, I used a shutter speed of 1/250s.
