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

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

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.

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.

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

Dale

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.