What exposure times are required for shooting Ilford Delta 100 at dusk and/or at night?

[Brian Stater]

Hi Everyone

Can anybody give me some simple advice, please, on approximate exposure times needed when shooting Ilford Delta 100 film at dusk and/or at night??

I'm talking 35mm here, using a 50mm and a 35mm shift lens, ideally open at f8. I shall be using an Olympus OM2N camera

I have the necessary equipment -- a decent tripod and shutter release cable -- but have no real idea if I'm looking at exposures of many seconds, or a few minutes. I'm happy to experiment, but it'd be good to have some suggested starting points!

Also, how about processing? How hard should I push the film ... if at all?

As ever, I'd be grateful for your thoughts.

Best wishes

Brian

 

[loccdor]

This gets you in the ballpark, then you need to add more for reciprocity failure.

Dim night street scenes are going to be around EV 0. f/2.8 4 sec would go to f/8 30 sec. Reciprocity for Delta 100 at 30 sec is about 70 seconds. On dim artificially lit streets try exposures of 1 or 2 minutes... if there is a lot of strong lighting from shop windows, etc. you may get into the 15-30 second range.

I wouldn't push the film... night street scenes are already high contrast and pushing will reduce the brightness range you can capture.

 

[Kilgallb]

One thing I have had success with is to measure exposure with a digital camera set to ASA 3200 then increase exposure 6 stops. Then compensate for reciprocity. I shoot Delta 100 at 50.

 

[images39]

Ilford has a publication that provides reciprocity factors. This can be fairly helpful.

Dale

 

[murdocho]

It’s probably in the minutes. Acros has good reciprocity characteristics— just half a stop compensation for exposures over 2 minutes. Try that out instead of delta if your times are longer than 45 seconds.

In addition to what others recommended, The black cat exposure guide (google it) is a handy tool to find exposure times for a given scene. I’ve found the recommendations to be pretty good for night time. The exposure can vary a lot based on what phase the moon is in/where in the sky it is. The guide has several different moon phase and night scene descriptions.