Pushing HP5 to 1600 on a grey afternoon
September turned overnight this year. One week I was squinting at the meter, the next the light was the colour of dishwater by mid-afternoon. I had a roll of HP5+ in the OM-1 and a walk planned along the harbour, so I set the meter to 1600 and committed to the whole roll.
Pushing is not free. You are underexposing the film and asking the developer to make up the difference, and it can only do that for the highlights and midtones. Shadow detail that was never recorded stays unrecorded. What you get in exchange is shutter speed: 1/125 at f/4 instead of 1/30, which on a windy pier is the difference between a sharp frame and a soft one.
Development
I used DD-X at 1+4, 20°C, and followed Ilford’s published time for EI 1600, agitating for the first ten seconds and then four inversions each minute. I have tried stand development for pushes and never liked the edge effects, so I keep it boring and repeatable.
What came out
The negatives are thin in the shadows, as expected, but the grain is tighter than I remembered and the contrast is honestly pleasant in flat light. The frames that worked best were the ones with a clear light source in the scene: a lit café window, wet stones reflecting the sky. Frames of evenly lit grey walls went muddy, and no amount of curves will save them.
Meter for the part of the scene you care about, not the average. At 1600 there is no latitude left to be lazy with.
I will do it again, but on purpose, not as a rescue.