Ilford Delta 400 pushed to 800 / Not happy, advice?

[koraks]

To hundreds of degrees C, not at room temperature.

Indeed. There's no way stannous chloride stored in a darkroom would magically fog 35mm film in the same room.

All my film would have been fogged by now if this were the case, LOL!

 

[Ian Grant]

There's a possibility over looked when t come to the fogging. These days so many items have neon or led indicators, extension leads. PC speaker. PC's themselves, internet boosters, radiators, etc, these are all items I have in my darkroom and. While I can cover most after maybe 5 minutes in the dark you start to notice there is a very low level of light and you can begin to detect outlines, where your hands are.

Now the time it takes to load a 35mm or 120 film is significant and stray light from an LED could well fog a 400 ISO film. In my case it's the blue LED which is quite intense of my WIFI booster, however this can be dimmed or turned off in the main router control panel.

Many tears ago a friend had colour cast issues developing RA-4 paper, this was eventually traced to an indicator on a piece of Durst equipment.

Ian

 

[npl]

OP how did you load the film in the reel, with a loading bag ? how sure are you that it's lightproof ?

Aside the fogging issue, your camera mostly exposed for the highlights (sky) leaving the building underexposed. The problem was amplified by the fact that you set the meter at 800.
In high contrast scenes reflective light meters are easily tricked. A spotmeter or a lightmeter app on your phone with a zoom function help in theses situations.

Lastly it was my understanding that films with tabular grain need longer fixing time. 3.5min may be too short

 

[grain elevator]

Lastly it was my understanding that films with tabular grain need longer fixing time. 3.5min may be too short

Seconded, I fix Delta 400 for longer, at least to have some margin of error (I don't recall my exact clearing times, they're scribbled on the fixer bottle...). And don't neglect agitation while fixing!

 

[Cheshire]

Hey fellow forum members Hope everyone’s doing well! Newbie here; I recently shot with a Delta 400, which I pushed to 800. I developed 1+9 with Ilfosol 3 for 14 min, agitated per every minute. (Which probably may have been too much as the negatives themselves seem very dark (I’d say overdeveloped probably compared to other films I’ve done)

I am really disappointed with the results, (too grainy, overall quality, and somewhat of “wave” marks probably during development.

Can anyone more experienced notice any particular areas that I could improve for next time? Many thanks for all your time and help!


PS. I am shooting with a Praktica** MTL50, with a 50mm/1.8 Pentacon and most of the photos where shot with my teleconverter attached (Tamron MC 2x).

These images are not extremely bad.. I have seen far worse negatives from my experiementations with Delta 400. Cost was a major factor for me when i got it last year.

But I ALWAYS have results like this when i use Delta 400 on SUNNY days. Over cast days with dull, even lighting, negatives always come out "thin" looking, but i can always see through them fine.

One the actual negatives, how shiny is each side of the negative itself. Is the emulson side flat black and matte looking, like a cast iron pan or black spray paint. Or is it shiny? On my super bright day shots, the emulsion side is always super black, thick, and like black spray paint.

But on the over cast day negatives, the plastic is shiny, and the emulsion side is slightly less shiny.

 

[grain elevator]

These images are not extremely bad.. I have seen far worse negatives from my experiementations with Delta 400. Cost was a major factor for me when i got it last year.

But I ALWAYS have results like this when i use Delta 400 on SUNNY days. Over cast days with dull, even lighting, negatives always come out "thin" looking, but i can always see through them fine.

One the actual negatives, how shiny is each side of the negative itself. Is the emulson side flat black and matte looking, like a cast iron pan or black spray paint. Or is it shiny? On my super bright day shots, the emulsion side is always super black, thick, and like black spray paint.

But on the over cast day negatives, the plastic is shiny, and the emulsion side is slightly less shiny.

Sounds like you underexpose, too, then. And perhaps overdevelop, if you get "super black" areas when the lighting is contrasty. It's definitely possible to get beautiful results from Delta 400, and it doesn't normally behave dramatically different from other films.

 

[Cheshire]

Sounds like you underexpose, too, then. And perhaps overdevelop, if you get "super black" areas when the lighting is contrasty. It's definitely possible to get beautiful results from Delta 400, and it doesn't normally behave dramatically different from other films.

I have several cameras, my newest is TSL 401. The spot meter and the average meter work the same, and in a test roll i did after a battery change last week, i couldnt even tell the difference between the frames i made with each one. Whole negative, on over cast day, despite the fact that almost every frame had a different aperture and shutter speed to balance the meter out, its a constant density all the way across.

But the one i shot previous month on a really sunny day, the frames that went nuts.

Some of the frames on sunny days, ive done multiples of the same thing to test and gotten screwy results. I mean, meter directly on the beer bottle in the sunlight light, then meter on the shoe in the shade under the table holding the beer bottle. And i get same horrid results.

When i try to print them, a grade two looks like the grade 5 example of the turkey that horenstien uses in his book on photography/printing.

 

[250swb]

I'm thinking there are two problems on one film. The fogging is an open issue and could have been caused by many things, but the under exposure is perhaps a combination of the crude metering system of the Practica which switches off when low and high exposure limits are reached, and exacerbated by the tele converter fitted which will reduce the light reaching the film.

 

[grain elevator]

I have several cameras, my newest is TSL 401. The spot meter and the average meter work the same, and in a test roll i did after a battery change last week, i couldnt even tell the difference between the frames i made with each one. Whole negative, on over cast day, despite the fact that almost every frame had a different aperture and shutter speed to balance the meter out, its a constant density all the way across.

But the one i shot previous month on a really sunny day, the frames that went nuts.

Some of the frames on sunny days, ive done multiples of the same thing to test and gotten screwy results. I mean, meter directly on the beer bottle in the sunlight light, then meter on the shoe in the shade under the table holding the beer bottle. And i get same horrid results.

When i try to print them, a grade two looks like the grade 5 example of the turkey that horenstien uses in his book on photography/printing.

Your sunny day problem is certainly overdevelopment then. Beside developing time, do you have dilution, temperature and agitation under control?
I'm less certain I understand your dull day problem. Are you saying these negatives are always too thin? If so, you do probably need to develop longer if your scenes are low contrast, but it sounds like more than that. It's also easy to underexpose if the sky is white - white sky is often much brighter than the landscape or whatever, much more so than blue sky, and will throw an exposure meter off. You should point the camera away from the sky to meter.
Your exposure meter might also have a nonlinearity issue that leads to underexposure in darker conditions.
I don't see how Delta 400 coupd be at fault.

 

[koraks]

@grain elevator please note that @Cheshire does no longer participate on this forum. Your questions will remain unanswered.

 

[retina_restoration]

Your exposure meter might also have a nonlinearity issue that leads to underexposure in darker conditions.
I don't see how Delta 400 coupd be at fault.

I think so too. This isn't about Delta 400 being weird or under-performing - it's about poor metering practices and expecting the film to produce optimal results when overdeveloped.

 

[Saganich]

Probably, yeah.
Look at Mrs. Bessanova's film.
I understand your reasoning, but it appears that the fogging of CT turns out to be pretty even.

The thing with CT is for it to work, you need a lot of samples, essentially. Apparently the old school x-ray equipment would just pulse the radiation source in sync with the periodic detection/sampling. It looks like CT just leaves the exposure running and then samples at high frequency to get the desired resolution.



Stannous chloride does not fume. There's in fact very little in a typical darkroom that would fume and fog, with the possible exception of the old fashioned smelly sepia toning that virtually nobody's using. And you'd have to pull some really weird tricks to get 35mm film inside a casette to fog as a result. It's not fumes, this much is safe to assume.

High resolution CT take 1mm slices, compared to 5mm slices from the old CT's.

 

[russgorman]

As Augustus Ceasar discusses above. I think you would be better served shooting Delta 3200 rated at 1600. I process mine in ilford DDX. The negatives in your example have very high base plus fog and others have offered good suggestions about causes of that and high-grain. I have had similar fogging from an airport scanner in the last couple years. I have all of my film in a clear zipock hand-checked at every airport that will co-operate. A year ago at Heathrow, they would not cooperate, and they ended up fogging my film. (Delta 400 and Delta 3200). Looked like yours.

 

[titrisol]

Probably, yeah.
Look at Mrs. Bessanova's film.
I understand your reasoning, but it appears that the fogging of CT turns out to be pretty even.

The thing with CT is for it to work, you need a lot of samples, essentially. Apparently the old school x-ray equipment would just pulse the radiation source in sync with the periodic detection/sampling. It looks like CT just leaves the exposure running and then samples at high frequency to get the desired resolution.



Stannous chloride does not fume. There's in fact very little in a typical darkroom that would fume and fog, with the possible exception of the old fashioned smelly sepia toning that virtually nobody's using. And you'd have to pull some really weird tricks to get 35mm film inside a casette to fog as a result. It's not fumes, this much is safe to assume.

New scanners produce odd patterns, more like doppler effect than wavy
I lost all my pics of Devils tower due to those

 

[GregY]

As Augustus Ceasar discusses above. I think you would be better served shooting Delta 3200 rated at 1600. I process mine in ilford DDX. The negatives in your example have very high base plus fog and others have offered good suggestions about causes of that and high-grain. I have had similar fogging from an airport scanner in the last couple years. I have all of my film in a clear zipock hand-checked at every airport that will co-operate. A year ago at Heathrow, they would not cooperate, and they ended up fogging my film. (Delta 400 and Delta 3200). Looked like yours.

I have to comment that CT scanners and their effects have been known for several years now and travelling professionals have figured out how to deal with them.... either by processing in country or shipping the film home. Bureaucratic systems aren't based on accommodation/cooperation, but on enforcing generalized rules.

 

[bluechromis]

When trying to troubleshoot a problem, it can be difficult solve it if there are multiple possible causes. It is a huge advantage to isolate one variable at a time so we can see the effect of changing that one thing. To that end, it is worth it to, at least once, do some controlled exposure/development tests. There are books and other sources that go into this. A test might involve shooting a roll of film of exactly the same subject that has a wide range of tones with the same settings and using the same film speed. In a dark setting, cut the exposed film into two or more sections. Then, give the sections different development times, e.g., one at normal time and one at pushed time. The only variable we have changed is development time, so we can see exactly what that does. There can be subtle but significant differences you see when you put negatives on a light table (source) that are the same except for one thing that you would not see when comparing negatives that differ in many ways.

In the next test, you could shoot a roll as before but use a different film speed, e.g., pushed, and use the same method of developing. With these negatives, we have a matrix that shows the effects of various combinations of exposure and development time, which includes the difference between normal and pushed negatives. Many authors recommend a more extensive test, going to the extremes of exposure and development. I think it is educational to do that at least once. For one thing, one may learn that modest changes in development may not look dramatically different. One may learn that even heavily overexposed negatives look surprisingly good.

 

[titrisol]

Adding also a close up

Images are not bad, and as mentioned before there is a lot of base color (fog)
Are your negatives well fixed? Do they look "milky"
Delta needs a long fix time, in the order of 5 min
Try refixing a strip and see if the B+F goes away.