Delta 3200 Fine Grain Developer

Ara Ghajanian · Nov 18, 2005

Good morning,
I'm shooting some Delta 3200 for indoor available light nudes this weekend. I'm looking for a developer that will produce fine grain with this type of film. What do you recommend for Delta 3200? I've been using Rodinal with medium speed films lately and I feel it would be a bad choice since the high accutance charateristics will only make the grain appear more pronounced. I want results that are not only fine grain, but that have good tonal gradations. I'll be shooting 35mm and 120, by the way. I want to get away from the Rodinal look also, so any developer you can recommend that will work well with other Ilford films is fine too. I've never tried the Ilford brand of chemicals and would be interested in supporting this fine company.
Thanks in advance,
Ara

jim appleyard · Nov 18, 2005

You've got a bunch to choose from: D-76, D-23, D-25, Microdol-X, Perceptol, X-tol, and from the Formulary; MCM-100, 12, and of course the pyro's.

I'm sure others will add to the long list of fine-grain dev.

fhovie · Nov 18, 2005

Microphen is the best for this application. It pushes well and is very fine grain. You can also mix it up yourself if you have the chemicals.

titrisol · Nov 18, 2005

Ilford DDX or Clayton F76+ are the ones I've had the best results with.

I believe Xtol will be just as good.

D3200 with Rodinal will give you a speed of 1000 approx.

Rlibersky · Nov 18, 2005

I've used Ilford ID11 with good success.

André E.C. · Nov 18, 2005

Wonderful in Ilfotec DD-X!

Cheers

André

Ara Ghajanian · Nov 18, 2005

Thanks for the replies so far.

I've been doing some reading here and there and it seems like DD-X is a good choice. I've been looking at the Massive Development chart for times. Any recommendations for EI3200? I may pick some up tomorrow from Hunt's in Providence when I go to pick up their last bottle of Rodinal.
sniff
Ara

Ara Ghajanian · Nov 18, 2005

Actually, while we're on the subject of Rodinal... how do you think Delta 3200 in 120 would look in Rodinal 1+50? Obviously, I'm not as concerned with grain size as with 35mm, but how would the tonality appear? Any experiences?
Ara

2Ldude · Nov 18, 2005

I have used PMK 1:2:100 68degree's Agitation Cycle: 5sec every 30sec Total dev time: 9:00min all this in stainless steel tank.

I have data I picked up somewhere for Pyrocat and will post it later when I get home.

Soeren · Nov 18, 2005

Ara Ghajanian said:
Actually, while we're on the subject of Rodinal... how do you think Delta 3200 in 120 would look in Rodinal 1+50? Obviously, I'm not as concerned with grain size as with 35mm, but how would the tonality appear? Any experiences?
Ara

Now you are talking Thats a question I'd like to ´know the answer to.
I am planing to do some nudes of my girl/wife/whaetever on Delta 3200
size 120 and develop it in Rodinal. So far the mantraon APUG has been (IIRC) e.g. shoot as 1600 dev as 3200. So wghat to expect
Søren

kaiyen · Nov 18, 2005

I know that with Microphen, Ilford's times in the past have been off by one whole stop. ie - if you shot at 3200, you need to dev at Ilford's recommend time for 6400. I am not sure if that's the case with DDX, but you might want to research that.

I use 13:00 in Microphen 1+0, normal agitation at 20C.

allan

titrisol · Nov 18, 2005

Yes, I prefer developing by 1 extra stop with DDX

Ara Ghajanian · Nov 18, 2005

titrisol said:
Yes, I prefer developing by 1 extra stop with DDX

So if I shoot at 3200 I should develop for 6400? Interesting.

I have half a roll of Delta 3200 I shot at a club that I haven't processed yet. The lighting is going to be different than what I am attempting this weekend (stage lights vs. table lamps and ambient indoor light), do you think that would be a good roll to do a quick development time test with? Since I'm shooting multiple rolls, maybe I'll develop them separately and check densities and adjust accordingly.

Thanks for the advice Kaiyen & Titrisol, you just saved my stuff from being underexposed by a stop.
Ara

Leon · Nov 18, 2005

rate it at between 800 and 1600 and process in perceptol 1:3. long dev times but wonderful negs

kaiyen · Nov 18, 2005

Ara Ghajanian said:
So if I shoot at 3200 I should develop for 6400? Interesting.

Well, that's the case with Microphen and, apparently, also with DDX as per Pablo/titrisol's experiences.

I have half a roll of Delta 3200 I shot at a club that I haven't processed yet. The lighting is going to be different than what I am attempting this weekend (stage lights vs. table lamps and ambient indoor light), do you think that would be a good roll to do a quick development time test with?

Well, Delta 3200 is a pretty low contrast film. For the stage lighting, you'll probably get great results using a developer like DDX or microphen, both of which are relatively low contrast developers. That combination will probably give you some nice negatives.

You may want to consider that dim, low contrast lighting might not work as well with Delta 3200. Just something to think about. Pushing a slower filim might give it more snap, and the grain will be smaller (though probably more intense).

So...never hurts to do a test roll, but I don't know if it'll be as useful since the lighting is so different.

Thanks for the advice Kaiyen & Titrisol, you just saved my stuff from being underexposed by a stop.

from being under_developed_ by a stop

allan

df cardwell · Nov 18, 2005

I'll vote for DD-X.

Here's a hint: Shoot at 3200 ( or whatever ) but shoot a test roll that you can cut into short clips for development testing.

Take a careful look at the Ilford poop sheet:
http://www.ilford.com/html/us_english/pdf/delta3200.pdf

With DDX, EI 1600 is a normal gamma of .58 ( 8 minutes )
EI 3200 ( 9 1/2 minutes ) you're still normal-ish, at .65.

The curves suggest a shoulder in fleshtone highlights, the 9 1/2 ' development time is probably a better choice than 8, it'll push the highlights back up where you expect them to be... confirming the advice given here ... develop for the next highest EI. The 12' time, though, promises a pretty high density for the highlights, but not dangerous !

Whether you're using Ilford or Kodak 3200, the negs will present the information in a different way than you accustomed. Have a great time.

titrisol · Nov 30, 2005

Thanks to Lowell I received a sample of F76+ last february.

I thiink it is comparable to DDX in times and results.

timeUnit · Nov 30, 2005

Whatever you do, do not use Rodinal 1+25 for 11 minutes @ 20°C. I not know many stops underdeveloped it turned out, but it sucked. XTOL 1+1 for 22 minutes @ 20°C worked out OK. Here's an example: Dead Link Removed

*h

KenM · Nov 30, 2005

I recently shot a roll of Delta 3200, EI 1600 developed in DDX 1+4 for 8.5 minutes. I had to increase constrast a fair bit (I think it was 75M) to get the print I was aiming for. I think I'll probably increase the time to 9.5 minutes for the next roll...

The shots was made outside, in the shade with some sunlight. One shot was of my dog leaping over my prone wife....You've gotta love it when you can do stop action with medium format cameras with a long lens, and have everything be tack sharp - well, everything that needs to be sharp! I'll post the image tonite when I get home in the tech gallery....

lee · Nov 30, 2005

Pablo,

I am sure you are thankful for Lowell Huff and his F76 and development info. The fact that he is not a subscriber or sponsor means he does not look at APUG.ORG as anything other than a place he can sell his goods without paying any commission. This is abuse in my opinion.

lee\c

Ole · Nov 30, 2005

The moderating team is aware of mr. Huff's recent activity on the forum, and are currently debating whether to stop him before or after he ensures that no APUG subscriber will ever buy one of Clayton Chemical's producs.

kaiyen · Nov 30, 2005

Lee,
I didn't get the impression that Pablo stated an opinion either way on Lowell's marketing tactics.

I think F76+ is pretty good, too, and was able to try it out from a sample from Lowell, too. I am not saying that his methods are good or bad, but am merely pointing out that contacting him may yield an opportunity to try it out, too.

allan

Robert Budding · Mar 26, 2006

I recently tried DDX with a roll of 120 Delta 3200 shot at EI 1600. First attempt was at a friend's recommended dilution of 1:15 @ 68 degrees for 14 min (2 inversions each minute). The negs looked really good. Decent shadow detail and highlights not too dense, the way that I like them. Still haven't printed them, but I expect a 2.5 or 3 filter will work well.

Nice film/developer combination. But I really need to shoot some film tests,

gnashings · Mar 26, 2006

Ara Ghajanian said:
Actually, while we're on the subject of Rodinal... how do you think Delta 3200 in 120 would look in Rodinal 1+50? Obviously, I'm not as concerned with grain size as with 35mm, but how would the tonality appear? Any experiences?
Ara

Ara,

I speak from limited experience, as after trying it I disliked the results so much that I didn't do it again - but - Rodinal 1+50 with Delta 3200 @ 3200 standard agitation (30se c then 10 sec each minute) gave me the following results:
- BOULDER like grain
- low contrast
- slightly thin negs

Now, I know that the latter two could be worked on, but even a grain phile like me couldn't find the grain attractive (these were candids, indoors - woman and baby, if I recall correctly). Perhaps for different subject matter (foggy landscapes? I actually think that is something I may try for the specific look...), with a little more agitation and dev time, it would be ok - but not for people shots, at least not the way I did it - especially with a baby!
Of course, please take these observations with the disclaimer of having them come from a relative beginner, and someone who didn't like enough about the results to try any further fine-tuning.
I too, have had best results with Micrphen 1+0, and still found the film to be a little "blah" for human subjects. As you can surely derive from the useage of the highly technical term "blah", this is a highly subjective observation

Best of luck!

Peter.

pauldc · Mar 26, 2006

Last week I posted an update on this thread about Delta 3200 and pyrocat-hd with some example scans. I would not say it is 'fine grain' but I certainly feel the grain is tight and prints very nicely at 5x7 inch print size.

Link is: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Delta 3200 Fine Grain Developer

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