Ilford Products
By Peter Dalton
Multigrade Sensitised Paper
One of Ilford Ltd.’s most innovative products must have been their Multigrade sensitised papers. The original patent was granted in Germany in 1912 but was neglected. Ilford Ltd researched the patent and introduced Multigrade papers as early as the mid-1930s but it was not a success initially.
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Prior to the Mulitgrade paper, to make a successful print from a black and white negative it was necessary to choose the grade of sensitised paper which best suited the optical density of the negative being printed. This was a matter of judgement for the operator based on his skill and previous experience. Sensitised papers were available in three grades, "soft", "medium" and "hard" and in both matt and glossy finishes. Multigrade sensitised paper did away with the necessity of keeping stocks of at least six different papers (hard, medium and soft and each in both matt and glossy finishes) replacing them with a single stock of Multigrade papers and three re-useable (initially) gelatine filters of differing shades of yellow.
FP3 and HP3
The earliest of Ilford Ltd.’s black and white films to be really successful was Selochrome. This was an orthochromatic material. From the mid-1930s when 35mm cameras became more popular, serious amateurs and professionals moved to FP3 and HP3. Both FP3 and HP3 were available and most suited to the 35mm format. FP3 was a fine grain panchromatic film while HP3 was again panchromatic but a faster film suitable for low light conditions or an action shot which demanded a high shutter speed. With the advent of reliable colour emulsions and dyes the colour fastness of Ilford Ltd.’s materials seems to have been better than that of at least some of their competitors. For example the dyes of some competitor's materials degraded to blue and shades of blue instead of the vibrant colours they were when first exposed. This occurred even when the transparencies were stored under ideal conditions of temperature, humidity and in total darkness. However in the late 1950s, Ilford Ltd was slow to adopt the plastic mounts favoured by other manufacturers.
Cine Film
The photograph shows cardboard box which had contained one spool of 8 mm cine stock used only by amateurs. It was supplied as 16 mm film and used twice such that half the length of the film was exposed each time. The film was then returned to Ilford Ltd who processed it, split it down the middle, joined the two ends together so that the exposed film was now twice the original length and added a white "leader" before returning it to the sender. Processing the stock was always included in the purchase price. The white leader was to allow the projectionist to thread the film through the projector. When finished in it would run for 4 minutes at 20 fps (frames per second) which was the accepted normal speed for 8 mm cine film stock. When a customer returned a number of spools together, Ilford Ltd. would process them as normal but would also join them together if requested at no extra charge.
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It is believed that no other cine stock producing company offered this useful service. The photograph also shows an example of a number of 8mm Ilford films joined together in this way as received by the customer in a specially designed plastic box again with a white leader attached. The top cover of this box carried the Ilford logo. In addition they also supplied (mainly) 35mm cameras though generally these were made abroad but badged with the Ilford Ltd Logo and aimed at the serious amateur photographer.
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Ilford Ltd was also in the manufacture of film for use in hospitals and other x-ray applications.
Photo by Peter Dalton