Ilford XP2 Super 400

Research-backed original, derived from the Ilford XP2 Super datasheet (archived, Nov 2018). The odd one out in the B&W bank: XP2 Super is a chromogenic black-and-white film, a dye image, not a silver one, processed in C-41 colour chemistry alongside colour negative film. That single fact drives every value below. Derivation in the notes.

The one line that explains the whole recipe

"Down-rated or overexposed XP2 SUPER negatives have finer grain, the opposite of that expected and obtained with conventional films." Ilford, XP2 Super technical information, p.1

Every other film in this bank punishes overexposure. XP2 rewards it. Because the image is built from dye clouds formed during development rather than from silver grains already present in the emulsion, more exposure means more, smaller, more finely distributed dye, so the negative gets cleaner as you give it light. That is why this recipe carries the bank's most positive default exposure compensation for a B&W stock, and why its grain sits two tiers below every other 400-speed original here.

Why these values

• Grain Weak, Small, a 400-speed film at the 100-speed grain tier, and that is the point. The datasheet's own product line is "ISO 400/27º SHARP, FINE GRAIN, BLACK AND WHITE PROFESSIONAL FILM." This was the first 400-speed original in the bank to sit at Weak/Small, alongside Acros 100, Delta 100 and Pan F Plus 50, and T-Max 400 has since joined it there, where HP5 Plus 400 and Delta 400 both run Strong/Small and Tri-X 400 runs Strong/Large. Set against them, this is the whole reason to reach for XP2.
• DR400, the widest-latitude claim in the bank, and it is documented, not folklore. Ilford states an exposure range of EI 50/18 to EI 800/30 on a single roll with standard C-41 processing, no adjustment: five stops, most of it on the overexposure side. The sheet's opening paragraph says the film "makes sure excellent results when there is a wide subject brightness range." No other datasheet in this collection makes a latitude claim this specific or this large. DR400 is not a stylistic choice here. It is the film.
• Highlight −2 / Shadow −1, the first negative Shadow value of any B&W original here. Every other B&W recipe in the bank runs Shadow positive (+1 or +2) because those films are being asked to give deep, closed blacks. XP2 is asked to do the opposite: hold everything. Ilford's print-making section describes prints with "a full range of tones including excellent highlight and shadow detail," "even from subjects with a wide brightness range." A long, open, low-contrast scale is a faithful reading of a negative designed to be printed on variable-contrast paper: contrast is set at the printing stage, not baked into the film. The result reads flat next to Tri-X. That is correct, not a fault.
• Sharpness +1, Clarity 0. Same discipline applied as everywhere else. "Sharp" appears in the product title and "exceptionally sharp, crisp prints" in the body copy, so Sharpness goes positive. But the sheet gives no acutance figure and no "edge contrast" language: the specific wording that earns Pan F Plus 50 its Sharpness +2 / Clarity +2 tier. So XP2 lands at +1 with Clarity at the house default, exactly as Delta 100 did for the same reason. Same standard, different evidence, different result.
• ISO 500-800, a deliberately narrow band, and the honest one. Ilford: "Push processing is not recommended as, unlike conventional ISO 400/27° films, no practical increase in film speed is achieved when XP2 SUPER film is push processed." This is the one 400-speed B&W in the bank that genuinely cannot be pushed: every other one here carries a ceiling of 6400 or 12800 precisely because it pushes. EI 800 is the film's stated top. DR400 sets the floor at ISO 500 on the X-T5. Between them you get a two-thirds-stop working band, which is faithful to a film whose whole design assumes you give it more light, not less.
• Exposure Compensation +1/3 to +1. The inverse grain law above, applied. Ilford's own speed table names EI 200/24 as "finer grain (with easy printing)" and EI 50/18 as "finest grain (but with denser negatives)", i.e. The manufacturer's route to the best image is to overexpose by one to three stops. +1/3 to +1 is that advice translated, kept short of the point where a JPEG's highlights would suffer even at DR400.
• Monochromatic Color 0. Ilford is explicit that XP2 negatives are "printed on black and white paper in the same way as conventional black and white negatives", a neutral print is the intended output, whatever colour the negative itself happens to be. See the toning variant below for the other half of that story.
• Acros base, High ISO NR −4: house standard for every B&W original.

Variants

Handling

• Give it light. This is the only recipe in the bank where that is a technical instruction rather than a taste. Meter for the shadows and let the highlights ride. DR400 and Highlight −2 are there to catch them.
• Do not push it. If the light is gone, change recipes, not ISO.
• Where it sits against the other 400s: HP5 Plus 400 is the forgiving reportage classic with even, visible grain. Delta 400 is the modern T-grain precision build with a documented Gbar 0.62 contrast target. Tri-X 400 is the coarse, punchy one. XP2 is the clean one: the 400-speed film you use when you do not want the film to be visible at all.
• Video: Film Sim + DR (manual) + Tone Curve transfer. Grain is unavailable in movie mode, and on this recipe that matters least of any B&W here, since the grain is nearly off anyway (see Video / Movie Mode, settings, differences, and photo→video translation).

Validation tier: Datasheet-validated (archived, Ilford XP2 Super technical information, Nov 2018: EI 50-800 single-roll exposure range, the "sharp, fine grain" product claim, the explicit no-push statement, C-41 chromogenic construction, variable-contrast-paper printing intent). Characteristic pass: consistent with the long-documented behaviour of chromogenic B&W films as a class. No real-film scan yet.

A second useful frame: the same subject shot at box speed and at EI 200, to test the inverse grain law directly.

Pro tip: XP2 is the film that breaks the bank's own rules (2026-07-25). It is one of only two 400-speed originals here with Weak/Small grain, alongside T-Max 400, and it is the only B&W original with a negative Shadow value, the only one that must not be pushed, and the only one where the manufacturer's advice is to overexpose. If a value in this recipe looks wrong against its neighbours, that is usually because chromogenic film genuinely behaves the other way round. Check the notes before "fixing" it.

ISO 500 is the sweet spot, not a compromise (measured 2026-07-27). DR400 pins the ISO floor at 500, and that is exactly where the X-T5's conversion-gain step sits, so it is the cleanest ISO in that region, not a tax you pay for using DR400. ISO 640 is the expensive next click: roughly 0.35 EV of dynamic range for one third-stop, against about 0.02 EV for the step from 400 to 500. In good light, hold ISO at 500 and control exposure with aperture and shutter. Measured from published read-noise and PDR data, see Dynamic Range & Tone Curve, the contrast controls.

Datasheet-derived original. Source: Ilford XP2 Super technical information, Nov 2018. Archived locally at the datasheet archive, 5 pages, read in full. Settings in the notes.

What the datasheet actually says

The physical fact underneath, and why it inverts the usual rules

Conventional black-and-white film contains silver halide crystals. Development converts them to metallic silver, and grain is the clumping of those crystals. Crystal size is fixed when the film is coated, so more exposure means more crystals developed, i.e. More visible grain. Every conventional B&W recipe in this bank is built on that assumption.

XP2 is chromogenic: no silver survives into the final image. Development couples dye into clouds that form around the exposed sites, and Ilford states plainly that the exposure/grain relationship runs the other way. Ilford's own speed guidance makes it explicit:

That is a manufacturer telling you to overexpose by up to three stops for the best image. It is the direct source of the recipe's Exposure Compensation +1/3 to +1, which is more positive than any other B&W original here.

Two consequences worth stating carefully, because they are the kind of thing that is easy to overclaim:

1. Fine grain is a claim the sheet makes in its product title, not a granularity figure it publishes. Ilford gives no RMS number for XP2, unlike Acros 100 (RMS 7) or Delta 3200. So Grain Weak, Small rests on the stated "fine grain" identity plus the documented inverse exposure/grain relationship. Strong evidence for the direction, no published number for the magnitude. Flagged in the recipe.
2. The inverse law is about the negative, not about a digital sensor. A Fujifilm JPEG's Grain Effect is a fixed overlay. It does not get finer when you add exposure compensation. So the recipe encodes the result of Ilford's advice (fine grain, generous exposure) rather than simulating the mechanism. That distinction is inference on my part, clearly labelled, the datasheet says nothing about digital anything.

Why this recipe breaks four of the bank's own conventions

Only one of these is a stylistic judgement (how far to take Shadow). The other three are the datasheet contradicting the pattern, and the recipe follows the datasheet.

The tone-curve decision, argued rather than asserted

The sheet contains one sentence that can be read two ways:

"The excellent highlight and shadows of XP2 SUPER give enhanced negative contrast for optimum black and white print quality."

Read as "this film is contrasty," it would argue for positive Highlight and Shadow. I read it the other way, for two reasons that come from the same document:

1. It is a sentence about why prints come out well, the negative holds usable density at both ends, so the print has range to work with. That is a latitude claim wearing a contrast word.
2. Ilford recommends printing XP2 on MULTIGRADE variable-contrast paper, and notes that the dye image's contrast is "virtually unaffected by the system of enlarger illumination used." Both point the same way: the negative is the flat, stable, complete record, and contrast is a decision made at the printing stage.

Hence Highlight −2 / Shadow −1, and the "Print-punch" variant in the recipe, which exists specifically so that the printing step is available as a separate, deliberate move rather than being baked in.

Where it sits in the bank

Four films at the same box speed, four genuinely different emulsion strategies: conventional (HP5, Tri-X), tabular/T-grain (Delta 400), and chromogenic (XP2). That is a real chemistry axis, the same kind of distinction the B&W README already draws between the Delta family and their conventional-grain siblings, and XP2 extends it to a third category.

Two facts that never reach the recipe, but are worth knowing

• Digital ICE works on XP2 and on no other B&W film. Dust-and-scratch removal scans with infrared. Conventional B&W's metallic silver reflects that infrared exactly as dust does, so ICE cannot be used. XP2's image is dye, so it is invisible to the detection beam. This is a scanning-workflow fact with no in-camera equivalent, but it explains part of why XP2 negatives so often arrive back from a lab looking unusually clean, which in turn is part of the look people remember.
• XP2 negatives are pink or red-brown, and lose that cast with long washing or daylight exposure (residual sensitising dye bleaching out) with no effect on image quality. This has nothing to do with the print, but it is the source of the "XP2 scans look slightly toned" experience, and it is why the recipe offers a Monochromatic Color WC +2 variant grounded in the sheet's own line about "colour toned monochrome prints" from colour-paper proofs.

Validation status

Datasheet-validated, no scan. Everything above is quoted or directly derived from the archived Ilford technical sheet. The digital translation decisions. Grain tier, tone-curve reading, ISO band, exposure compensation. Are mine, and are argued in the open above so they can be disagreed with.

Highest-value evidence to add: a scan with a genuinely wide subject brightness range (bright window + dark interior, or open sun + deep shade). Latitude is this film's entire identity and it is the one property a single frame can settle. Second: a matched pair at EI 400 and EI 200 to test the inverse grain law directly.

Derived: 2026-07-25