Ilford Delta 100 at ISO 250 Question????

DREW WILEY said:

The good news with a characteristic curve like Delta has is that if you're a bit underexposed, you'll still get something recorded down there, because the toe is quite gradual and doesn't drop off a cliff. The bad news is that you will land the shadows where the curve rises very slowly,
so the gradation between the shadow values is not particularly obvious. Depending on the specific subject and conditions, this is one of
those scenarios where the glass can either be classified as half-empty or half-full. It's just good to know, so you can plan and develop your
shots accordingly if shadow detail is important to you.

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Drew, it was an interesting mistake, but at least I know that it wasn't a total disaster like some films can be. I was a little under-the-weather this morning so I'll wet print a couple tonight.. I certainly wouldn't make a habit of under-exposing Delta 100, but at least I know it holds up rather well to it. John W

flavio81 said:

JW PHOTO, they look just fine, thanks for the scans, this test is valuable to us who might want to push Delta 100 in the future.

From your tests, i would have no fears to use it at 400 if needed (for example, when I only have D100 in the bag.)

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I think it would be doable if you had no choice and were willing to develop all the rest of the shots on the roll for the same time. I did notice that the edges of the roll were slightly over developed compared to the center. That really surprised me since I used very gentle agitation at 30 sec. in the beginning then one very gentle inversion at 1 minute for the remainder. That has me puzzled a little???? John W

Time for some reality, Michael. You might believe that all films are the same, but they're not. This is exactly the kind of scenario where it
helps to know the differences. If Delta 100 was the last black and white film on earth, could I still get wonderful prints? Of course. But I'd
shoot it selectively, for those scenes and subjects it favors, just like how we learn to automatically evaluate the characteristics of scene contrast when shooting color chrome film. And sometimes it helps to have a sharp knife at the kitchen cutting block rather than a hatchet.
In some cultures they simply throw the whole rat or monkey into the fire, singe the hair off, and eat it. In other cultures we prefer just the
meat nicely cut and cooked by itself, minus eyeballs, intestines, and bits of leftover hair. I'm not claiming one way is inherently better than the other. You get your protein either way. But there are valid individual preferences.

OK. Should have given a hard example. Two different T-grain films of same nominal speed. Sometimes I deliberately underexpose and overdevelop TMX to get hard black shadows for graphic effect, ala Brett Weston look. TMX has a very steep toe, so if you undexpose it, you
will step off a cliff and distinctly get solid black if you've intelligently metered your scene. Or I've done the same thing and snatch developed the print to leave very soft shadows simply for the sake of form, while deliberately attracting the viewer to all the nuances in the midtones and highlights. Delta 100 has a completely different personality in the way it handles shadow. The shadows gradually fade away, that is, in the sense of just getting progressively muddied together the farther down the curve you place your expose. This is because the toe curve is quite different from that of TMax. Since you imply that all this is some kind of grand hoax just to make the
public read otherwise meaningless Technical Data Sheets, I'm not stating it for your sake. But this kind of sensitometric fact does imply to
the immediate topic of this thread. In fact, it's highly predictable. Now if you want to open a camera store and sell only one kind of film,
that's you're prerogative. But not every customer will be happy.

Here we go again. Why would someone like Ilford even bother to market two films in the same nominal niche if they were so similar? - say,two approx 100 pan films with fine grain and med curve slope? (FP4 vs Delta 400). Delta has a tiny bit smaller grain; but in moderate contrast conditions I could make almost indistinguishable prints with either of them. But if you read the tech sheet there is the implication that FP4 is marketed as a broad-usage "commercial film". Why? Let just say that for every sheet of FP4 I've shot in the field, I've probably used 50 sheets in the lab. And most of this usage is related to exploiting the characteristics which it does not share in common with Delta. Like what? Color print masks, where the exact characteristics of the toe are paramount. Black and white interpositives. I even know a person who makes color separations for dye transfer and color carbon printing using FP4. While FP4 is not ideal at any of these applications, it is good enough to actually be useful for all of them. That seemingly insignificant difference in Delta 100 would render it a very clumsy choice for any of them. This isn't really an esoteric tool set. Back when the Ilford label marketed both Cibachrome (Ilfochrome) and FP4 as its recommended complement for masking, they probably sold significant piles of FP4 for just this kind of work.
My point is not to convert black and white shooters into color photographers, but to give just a idea of the tip of this iceberg. For many
APUG types, the distinction is really nitpicky. For some of us, it's extremely important. Besides color work, there are many many times
where even films in the nominal 100 category (FP4 vs Delta vs ACROS vs TMX etc) give remarkably different final looks to the print. For
example, TMX has quite a steep toe, so will resolve deep shadows quite crisply. But it has poor edge effect in most developers, so might
need a supplemental unsharp mask just to heighten that effect (which is exactly why the PS faux equivalent is labeled "unsharp mask").
But that edge softness (not lack of detail) often favors portraiture. With Delta, it's difficult to get really deep blacks with gradation in harsh
mtn and desert light. The best films for these were true "straight-line" films with an extremely short toe, like Super-XX, Bergger 200, and
Fomapan 200. But TMY400 works reasonably well, having a reasonably steep toe with the good edge effect TMX doesn't. I could write a book on all this damn stuff and illustrate it with example of my own work. But why? People can simply try for themselves if they're interested. Otherwise, a workshop presentation would be worth a thousand times as much as these endless web squabbles and their relatively worthless web-mauled imagery.

Well, speaking of toes..........................I have ten! Two long curved toes and eight short curved toes. Those are all the toes I care about at the moment. I have both a transmission densitometer and a reflective densitometer, but rarely use them except for initial film/developer tests. I have no intention of plotting curves at the moment and probably won't in the future either, but who knows. I do know that the simpler I keep things, the more fun I have. KISS...................John W

Sal Santamaura said:

I actually ended up with EI 250 when trying Delta 100 and DD-X. Many will tell you that personal EI results vary and can't be directly compared, but mine are based on a Pentax digital spotmeter that's spot on with lab-developed transparency film exposures, calibrated shutter speeds and the classic 0.1 over fb+f as measured by a calibrated densitometer.

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Sal, it is refreshing to read about your somewhat high EI of Delta 100 in DDX. My own tests of the same combo, also using a calibrated Pentax (Quality Light Metric) showed it to be about EI 160, see here: (there was a url link here which no longer exists)

"For safety" I have stuck to using it at EI 100 (at N) and I've plenty of shadow detail. I could easily consider it to be faster. Indeed, at N+ I seem to be overexposing it even when rating at EI 125 and EI 160! As this is my current film and developer of choice, I feel I should risk a higher EI at N, but there's an odd comfort in using the manufacturer's recommendation, at last, after not being able to do that previously, with any other film. It is amazing how much latitude these materials have.

Michael,
I like a little sword rattling now and again, as it spices things up a bit. The nice thing about the Internet is you can take a few jabs and not bleed to death. For me, at this point in my life, I don't want to take my photography to serious. I don't mean that I want to be sloppy, but I just want it to be relaxing and fun. For years I made a few bucks shooting weddings and people pictures and had enough seriousness in photography to last me a lifetime. Now it's for "ME" and if nobody likes it that's okay too. I guess what I'm saying is that I don't want to make work out of it and just want to enjoy myself. John W

Yeah Michael. .. I do spice things up with a bit of sarcasm sometimes; but as you can see from other threads, there are numerous other things we tend to agree about. A lot has to do with our expectations as end users, i.e., why we choose certain products for certain purposes, which obviously differ according to what projects might be involved. I just changed my mind about tomorrow's choice of film and lenses simply due to an alteration in the weather forecast. Thought it was going to be sunny with hard shadows, and looks like it will be overcast with a few sprinkles. I could make any number of films work either way; but if I have filmholders already loaded with a choice, and it appears that a specific lighting will hold most of the day, that's how I'll approach it, to optimize the final print. Let's just be glad we still do have lots of good films to choose from!