Help me understand high speed films -- p3200, delta 3200

[Sirius Glass]

Although IMO opinion John Hicks, a good photographer and a great person I bet, talks about a couple of relevant, valid things in his "comments", some of his words there don't seem to reflect experience in real low light photography... I repeat: in my opinion.
Examples: medium format is never the best option for low light + moving subjects. If you do landscape of any kind and you use tripod, no problem of course, but, f/2.8 for low light? I hope he's not talking about handheld photography. When light is low, even at f/1.4 @3200, speeds are low, like 1/30th and 1/15th. In those cases f/2.8 is totally useless if we need people without blur.
35mm and any f/1.4 lens are much better tools. Plus, we get a lot less DOF, at the same f-stop, if we use medium format instead of 35mm.
And what he says about rectangles made me smile: we don't use 6x6 to crop for a rectangle, but to compose for a square. We compose for a rectangle with 35mm or with 6x9.
6x7 doesn't replace 6x6, and it doesn't replace 6x9 either.

For low light level photography a tripod is needed for longer exposures. With the longer exposures people and other moving object will start to blur at some point. If blurring is acceptable then proceed. Otherwise use a larger aperture or faster film. Simple and direct.

I am looking for film speeds of 3200 because I want to use them with long lenses and therefore the maximum aperture is limited if I want to use shutter speeds of 1/250 second or 1/500 second to photograph wildlife. A tripod is needed because of the mass of the lens and the need to hold the subject in the field of view for long periods of time. There can be no fill in flash at those distances and the subject are not interested in moving to better lighting for my convenience.

 

[Moose22]

Just since it is along the same lines of experimenting, I'll add these here. Intend to experiment with Portra800 as well.

Cinestill 800t at 800. Handheld with an F3 using a 105DC or an 50 1.4 AIS (lab scans... so whatever the Noritsu spat out)

Top one is 1/60 at f/2, bottom one is 1/30 at f/2 as I wanted to try and make the twinkly lights halo a bit and still see some of the room.

Cinestill is more than passable in this environment.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I read in the past that Delta 3200 is really like an 800-1000 native speed. As though 3200 is 1 2/3 or 2 stops push to its "true" speed. Not sure I totally grok that, but I think it just means it's 1000 speed film with a few stops of latitude. Is the same true of P3200?

Yes. Depending on developer, Delta 3200 is 800-1250 at ISO contrast, depending on developer. The "normal" development time that Ilford lists gives more contrast than ISO contrast (which is ~0.62) and is effectively push processing. P3200 is similar with a speed of 640-1000 at ISO contrast, again, depending on what developer is used. Kodak's standard time also gives more contrast than ISO contrast, and is effectively push processing as well.

 

[Moose22]

I like HP5 at 800 better than I like it at 400.

There is grain if you zoom in, but it's pretty non contrasty at 400 so there's plenty of room to push without losing all the shadows. I could pull detail out of shadows and highlights here just fine.

I honestly should do a batch of films in known light with a still life subject/target so I get an apples to apples comparison.