When this film came out a few years ago I got myself about twenty rolls. I wanted to see how it compares to Ilford’s Delta 3200. I used to shoot Delta3200 on and off and managed to get some decent results with it in Microphen. It was always a little too grainy for my taste. Contrast was also really low like all Ilford films in my experience. I had to shoot it at EI 3200 and overdevelop to get results that worked for me. P3200 on the other hands seems to be a slower and more contrasty film. Grain seems to be finer, too.
Over the past few years I just used P3200 interchangeably with Tri-X in my M2. I changed nothing! Whether I loaded Tri-X or P3200, I show the same way. Both exposed them both at EI 1600 and just separate the films for development. P3200 I develop in Xtol 1:1 for 17:00. It gives a little more shadow detail than pushed Tri-X but to be honest it’s not very apparent. The grain doesn’t seem that much bigger either, but I have only printed on 5x7 so far. I assume on bigger prints you can tell a difference.
I am sure you can get different looks from this film at different exposure indices. I am just too lazy to change things when I shoot. I like to keep things consistent. This seems to work, so why change it?!
Considering the results aren’t that different from Tri-X I will probably shoot through the rest of my stash and leave it at that. Tri-X I bulk roll, which comes out to about $4.50 a roll, or half of what a roll of P3200 costs. It’s a nice film and I appreciate it being there, but realistically it doesn’t offer me anything I don’t already have.