My advice for shooting in low light is to forget about your meter. Seriously. Don't even bother with it. Instead, open up your lens and use the slowest shutter speed you can comfortably hold. By starting with the most light you can get on the film, you will be better off. If you underexpose doing this then you know there would have been nothing else you could have done. If it results in an overexposure, not really a big deal because it won't be by much.
To illustrate this with a simplified explanation, imagine if you are making a photograph and you have the perfect exposure with one lamp in the room. You add one more lamp in the same spot without changing the settings on your camera and you are now one stop overexposed. Not a big deal. To get two stops overexposed you have to add another two lamps. Three stops over, you have to add another four, and you are still fine! So you are shooting with 8 lamps instead of one, and your neg will still be printable. Keep going? Add another 8 lamps. You are now four stops over and getting into problem territory, but you now have sixteen lamps blazing! Get the picture? Now go the other direction. Cut the output of the single lamp by half and your image starts to fall apart.
Also Thomas' recommendation of developing more has been my experience as well, but you need to decide for yourself. If you are scanning for example and not making darkroom prints, then less development may be good for you.
The nominal speed for Delta 3200 is 1250 which is slightly more than the departed TMax 3200, which was 1000. The number 3200 is just marketing.
Hope that helps you.
TMY = T-Max 400I'm not too sure what TMY 400 is (T-Max?)
+1 for this method.
How grain looks is entirely subjective. I like to process Delta 3200 in Rodinal 1+25, which gives a nice sharp grain. Then from 35mm negs I make 16x20 prints, and find the results to be very pleasing.
To each their own. You can say that Delta 3200 definitely has a lot of grain; that is a fact. You can also say that it's grain is horrible; but that is not a fact, just your opinion.
Yes, you are of course correct.
However, if I were OP, I would ask the future mother what her opinion of grainy baby photos might be. There might be also some social expectations of what baby pictures "should" be like. Of course, what OP makes for himself alone is another matter.
Well, according to the delta 3200 data sheet:
DELTA 3200 Professional has an ISO speed rating of ISO 1000/31o (1000ASA, 31DIN) to daylight. The ISO speed rating was measured using ILFORD ID-11 developer at 20°C/68oF with intermittent agitation in a spiral tank.
Delta 3200 does not react to increased development like any other film out there - just look at the H&D curves from its data sheet. Yes, its negs will never look as nice and contrasty as pushed Tri-X or whatever, but if you treat it right it will give excellent prints. Because of its extremely long and flat shoulder region you will need higher paper grades unless your image resides in the toe region only.If your negatives are thin, shouldn't you develop them longer?
Delta 3200 does not react to increased development like any other film out there - just look at the H&D curves from its data sheet. Yes, its negs will never look as nice and contrasty as pushed Tri-X or whatever, but if you treat it right it will give excellent prints. Because of its extremely long and flat shoulder region you will need higher paper grades unless your image resides in the toe region only.
The film is itself an ISO 1000 film, so your shadow densities will only be significant if you expose it at an EI of 1000.I've got the inside of the box sitting right here in front of me, and it clearly says EI3200, with the first suggested developer DDX 1+4, 9.5 min at 68 deg. If shot and developed this way, like it says on the box, results are incredibly thin. Nowhere on the packaging is any reference to actual speed of 1000EI. There isn't even a column for it. I probably missed the boat on this completely, but don't believe I should have to push it to actually get the box speed. It wasn't until I pushed like crazy did I get anything close. In one case I remember doubling the developing time, which the inside of the box said I should have gotten at least EI12500 by doing so.
I've got the inside of the box sitting right here in front of me, and it clearly says EI3200, with the first suggested developer DDX 1+4, 9.5 min at 68 deg. If shot and developed this way, like it says on the box, results are incredibly thin. Nowhere on the packaging is any reference to actual speed of 1000EI. There isn't even a column for it. I probably missed the boat on this completely, but don't believe I should have to push it to actually get the box speed. It wasn't until I pushed like crazy did I get anything close. In one case I remember doubling the developing time, which the inside of the box said I should have gotten at least EI12500 by doing so.
I've got the inside of the box sitting right here in front of me, and it clearly says EI3200
There is absolutely such a thing as "box speed": it denotes the recommended EI, regardless of what technical ISO speed measurements would tell. The manufacturer, in this case Ilford, had a certain appearance in mind, and shooting at recommended EI will likely yield that appearance. If you prefer a different appearance which you achieve at different EI, there is no "box speed police" who would arrest you for shooting it at EI 1000, EI 6400 or whatever. Even EI50 and EI101202 is legal AFAIK.I don't know where people got the notion of 'box speed'. There is no such thing.
If you look at its characteristic curve, it has very low contrast in its very long shoulder region. You will inevitably get low contrast if you overexpose this film, even if you increase dev time, just look at the data sheet.In my limited experience with this film, it was very low in contrast.
Whether they are thin or dense, your negs are typically not the final medium. The only valid question is "can they be printed?". Feel free to push this film all you want, but then please don't complain about grain.If shot and developed this way, like it says on the box, results are incredibly thin. Nowhere on the packaging is any reference to actual speed of 1000EI. There isn't even a column for it. I probably missed the boat on this completely, but don't believe I should have to push it to actually get the box speed. It wasn't until I pushed like crazy did I get anything close. In one case I remember doubling the developing time, which the inside of the box said I should have gotten at least EI12500 by doing so.
I think my main issue here, and others that have had problems, is that nowhere on the box does it mention anything other than 3200, which I wrongly, and admittedly assumed was the film speed I should shoot it at.
There is absolutely such a thing as "box speed": it denotes the recommended EI, regardless of what technical ISO speed measurements would tell. The manufacturer, in this case Ilford, had a certain appearance in mind, and shooting at recommended EI will likely yield that appearance. If you prefer a different appearance which you achieve at different EI, there is no "box speed police" who would arrest you for shooting it at EI 1000, EI 6400 or whatever. Even EI50 and EI101202 is legal AFAIK.
Box speed is what you dial in on your camera after you loaded the film, and the film maker thinks you will get usable pictures if you follow this procedure. Obviously there are occasions where this won't give good results, but those aren't all that common.No, it doesn't. There is no such thing as 'box speed', only ISO speed. In my opinion it is very misleading to customers for Kodak and Ilford to label their films inconsistently. Tri-X Pan never used to have '400' in its name. It didn't need it. Its speed rating depended to some extent on the developer used. Microdol-X developer (very popular back then) reduced the speed by half. The ASA speed of Tri-X changed in 1960 from 200 to 400 due to a change in the method used by the American Standards Association to measure film speed. As many photographers have found, the old speed ratings were probably more accurate. I routinely expose my B&W film at 2/3 stop more than ISO speeds.
A general rule of thumb for most general purpose films:Its speed rating depended to some extent on the developer used. Microdol-X developer (very popular back then) reduced the speed by half. The ASA speed of Tri-X changed in 1960 from 200 to 400 due to a change in the method used by the American Standards Association to measure film speed. As many photographers have found, the old speed ratings were probably more accurate. I routinely expose my B&W film at 2/3 stop more than ISO speeds.
Each photographer must decide what is an acceptable negative. Beyond the film's innate capabilities, we are VERY MUCH in control of the final outcome, in terms of film exposure and processing. The level of shadow detail is determined by exposure, of course, and the level of overall contrast is determined by film developing time, agitation, and developer temperature / dilution.
Within that realm we can have the same film and developer construct wildly different results.
Thus, if negatives are 'thin' or 'low contrast' then a lot of that is because the user did not adjust their process enough to suit the materials.
Each one of us has a process of output, in terms of silver gelatin papers and developers, which also have characteristics to consider, so it is our RESPONSIBILITY to tune ALL of the steps leading up to the print, to the best of our ability.
We simply cannot say that 'I tried the film and I didn't like it because the contrast was too low'. That is something we largely affect ourselves, with our process, and it just shows that we didn't try hard enough to make it work, for whatever reason.
Delta 3200 is, for sure, a grainy film. I absolutely LOVE to use it for close-up work, particularly for portraits of women and children in 120 format. It looks incredible the way I see things; the grain adds something to the picture that I love. In 35mm it might be really grainy, but move in closer, and the resolution of the film will start to really shine, and the details will not be as obscured by the grain.
View attachment 179058
A general rule of thumb for most general purpose films:
1) if you want the highest quality of results for films developed by a commercial developing lab which makes machine prints of the negatives, use the ISO speed. This is because the ISO speed yields very high quality mid-tone and highlight reproduction in un-manipulated prints, and it is the mid-tones and highlights that tend to have the largest effect on the average viewer. The ISO rating system was developed based on tests of print quality from un-manipulated machine prints - it is the speed that statistically gives the highest such quality (subject to a built in safety factor); and
2) if you want results which yield a greater potential for darkroom manipulation, use something lower than the ISO speed. This is because lower ISO gives you enhanced detail in the shadows and, with the longer straight section of the characteristic curve for most modern films, gives you the option to use darkroom manipulations to enhance the shadow and mid-tone and highlight rendition. The lower speed will generally, however, give lower quality straight prints, because the results favour shadow detail over mid-tone and highlights, and are therefore less visually appealing.
It is rarely a mistake to use the ISO speed if you are making straight prints, but one of the exceptions is Delta 3200 (or Kodak T-Max 3200).
Those films (Delta 3200 and T-Max 3200) are the exceptions, because they are not general purpose films - they are designed to give very low contrast results when exposed at their ISO speeds. For that reason, the manufacturer recommends a different alternative - expose them to less light, and develop them more to give them more contrast.
In the case of both the Ilford and (now former) Kodak offerings, the manufacturers explicitly don't describe their labelled speed as being an ISO speed, and give detailed recommendations on how to achieve results at a number of different, non-ISO speed, with 3200 being a strong recommendation. Only those who don't bother to read the directions are likely to be misled in any way.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?