Very interesting backstory. Let's say I'm shooting Delta 400 in my SRT-101 and I have the camera set to box speed. What would be achieved by changing the camera setting to a lower or higher ISO than 400?
Hi, let me add a couple of points to fhis...
Bill Burk sort of skipped over one significant thing... when they did the print evaluations they were actually looking for the least amount of film exposure that gave high-quality prints. They were aiming for "just enough" exposure.
Fwiw the ISO film speed test (for negative filns) is to find a condition where the film is just barely beginning to be affected by light. So what happens when you underexpose the film? Essentially the film does not get enough exposure to record detail in the darkest areas - shadows or near-black things.
The result of printing these underexposed negatives, USING TRADITIONAL PRINTING ONTO PHOTO PAPER VIA AN ENLARGER, is difficulty in getting dark "blacks" on the print. They will tend to end up as a darkish-gray. Now, not every scene has dark shadows/blacks in it. In these cases, no problem - they'll print fine.
Let me point out, in case it's not clear, "underexposing" the film is roughly equivalent to using a higher exposure index, EI, for the film. In the case of your Delta 400, setting the camera meter to film speed = 800 is equivalent to underexposing by one f-stop.
So why would you do this? Well, one example might be shooting something in dim light, where your metered shutfter speed is so long that you will likely get too much motion blur. For example, a basketball game in a high school gym. Say that your meter gives 1/60 second exposure. From experience you may know that most shots are unacceptably blurred. But...if you can cut that exposure in half, to 1/125 second, the blur streaks are cut to half - this might be acceptable. (Note: this is equivalent to rating your Delta 400 at film speed = 800.) So... you might be willing to sacrifice shadow detail in order to minimize the motion blur.
Now, as I said before, loss of shadow detail typically means that you don't get good blacks in the print. How might you deal with this? Well, first you could try just printing darker. Presto! Good blacks. But... people's faces are probably too dark now. Another method is to print on paper that is more "contrasty," this lets you get better blacks, although detail is still missing in the shadows. But it generally looks OK, more or less. One other method is to overdevelop the film, generally called "push processing." This essentially increases contrast in the film, similar to printing on a "harder" (more contrasty) paper grade. Push processing might increase shadow detail just a little bit, and combined with a harder paper could give improved results.
Note that I'm sticking with the traditional methods - if you scan your film digitally you can do all sorts of manipulation. But I'm not gonna go there.
Now what about the opposite situation, where you meter at a lower film speed, roughly equivalent to overexposure? For b&w film I would see this mostly as a "safety measure," to protect against accidental underexposure. (In my book underexposure is, by far, the worst error.) Although some people prefer what they call "meaty," or perhaps "bullet proof" negatives - those with a lot of density. I'm sure they have their reasons, but I'm not one of them.
In the case of color negative film, though, there can be reasons why one might want to increase exposure beyond what the meter says. This is a more complicated situation; I'm not gonna explain that (unless you wanna know).