I need to use a film that has a wide brightness range, medium speed, fine grain and is tolerant of difficult conditions. Ilford FP4 Plus is far from being a new film (introduced in May 1968, updated to Plus in 1990) but it meets all of these needs. I use a medium speed film (FP4 is 125 ISO) for finer grain than something like HP5 Plus or Delta 400. I would have finer grain with Ilford Pan F Plus but the longer shutter speeds needed from the slow speed would more often require the use of the B setting for exposures over 4 seconds and I prefer to avoid this. The latent image (recording the scene on the film after you press the shutter button) is not as stable with Pan F compared to FP4 so on long trips and at busy times I can leave processing my films and not worry about the latent image fading and losing detail.

Here is a bit more history. The film format I use is 120 roll film. This format was introduced by Kodak in 1901 for its Brownie No. 2 cameras and survives today as the only medium format film, other than the double length 220 which Ilford deleted from its product range in 2003.