Ilford Ortho Plus is a slow, fine-grain black-and-white film that ignores red light, which means you can develop it by eye under a deep red safelight. That makes it one of the best teaching films around, and a fascinating one to shoot in a large format camera like our Sinar.

A short history of Ilford Ortho Plus

Ortho Plus started life as a sheet film for technical work. Ilford still lists it as Ortho Copy Plus, a large format film aimed at studio photography, continuous-tone copying, and medical and forensic use.

In October 2019 Ilford Photo brought the same emulsion to 35mm and 120 roll film, announcing it at PhotoPlus in New York, as Kosmo Foto reported at the time. Suddenly a film designed to copy negatives was something you could load into an everyday SLR or a medium format back, and landscape photographers quickly took to it.

Why Ortho Plus still matters

Most modern black-and-white films are panchromatic, so they respond to the whole visible spectrum. Ortho Plus is orthochromatic: it is sensitive to blue and green light but has little or no red sensitivity. Ilford rates it at ISO 80 in daylight and ISO 40 under tungsten light.

That missing red sensitivity changes the look. Reds and oranges come out darker and with more contrast than on a film like HP5 Plus or FP4 Plus, skies tend to go pale, and foliage gets a crisp, old-fashioned feel. Lips and skin blemishes darken in portraits too, which is either a charm or a warning depending on your sitter.

The practical darkroom advantage is the big one for us. Because the film cannot see deep red, Ilford says it can be handled under its 906 dark red safelight, with a 15W bulb at least 1.2m from the work. Ilford is clear that you should not use an amber safelight, as that can fog it. For a student watching a sheet of film come up in a dish for the first time, inspection development is a revelation, and it turns an abstract process into something you can actually see.

It is also a forgiving film to process. Ilford’s data sheet gives times for ID-11, Ilfotec DD-X, Ilfotec HC, Microphen, Perceptol and more, and you can push contrast up with PQ Universal or Phenisol if you want a graphic result. The roll films are on 0.125mm acetate, while the sheet film sits on a stiffer 0.180mm polyester base.

One thing to remember with large format: Ilford says exposures longer than one second need extra time to allow for reciprocity failure, so check the Ortho Plus technical data sheet before stopping down for a long landscape exposure.

Our darkroom notes

On our Tuesday night darkroom evening course we teach with the college’s Pentax K1000s, Hasselblad 500C, Mamiya RB67s and Sinar cameras, and Ortho Plus earns its place in the Sinar. A single sheet, a dish and a deep red safelight is the clearest way we know to show students what development is doing.

Is Ilford Ortho Plus still worth buying in 2026?

Yes, especially if you teach or are learning. It costs a little more than Ilford’s mainstream panchromatic films, and ISO 80 is slow for handheld work in a British winter, but no other current Ilford film lets you watch the image appear. For landscape shooters, the distinctive tonality gives you a look that is hard to recreate with filters on a panchromatic film.

If you shoot large format, sheet Ortho Plus is also a great way to practise loading, exposing and dish development, because you can see what is happening under the safelight rather than waiting until the fix.

Ilford Ortho Plus specifications

Ilford Ortho Plus price and availability

Ilford Ortho Plus is available now in 35mm, 120 and sheet sizes. When we checked on 15 October 2026, First Call Photographic listed 120 at £11.40 and a 25-sheet box of 4x5in Ortho Copy Plus at £82.51, both shown with a 10% discount. 35mm: [CHECK: current UK price]. Stock information on the retailer’s site was mixed, so check availability before you order.