In this video I’m talking about Ilford XP2 Super — a black and white film stock (35mm and 120) that I honestly think doesn’t get as much love as it deserves. The big headline is that XP2 is a chromogenic black and white film, which means you can develop it in standard C-41 chemicals, just like your favorite color negative film. For me, as someone who develops at home, that’s huge: one set of chemicals, one tank, and I can process basically everything I’m shooting without adding another whole workflow. I also break down a few practical things from Ilford’s technical data sheet, like exposure flexibility (Ilford says you can rate it from EI 50 all the way to 800 and develop normally) and reciprocity failure. If your meter says 10 seconds, you’re actually closer to 20 seconds with XP2, so it’s worth knowing if you’re doing long exposures. And then I get into why I keep coming back to it: XP2 is sharp, detailed, low-contrast in a really usable way, and the grain is fine enough that it kind of gets out of the way and lets the photos shine. I show a ton of real photos across multiple cameras, talk about where it’s not perfect (pushing compared to true B&W like HP5), and why I still think it’s absolutely worth trying.