Which film for all-round use and pushing to 1600? (hp5 or delta400)

Two pics from the same roll of 35mm HP5 exposed on either side of sunset @ 1600. I like using this film when there is the likelihood of changing light conditions. (Ilfosol 3, Nikon scanner)

It would be fun to try the same kind of thing with Delta400 and wet print them.

Helge said:

That’s pure conjecture on your part.

Click to expand...

Exactly.

It isn't difficult to try Delta 400 & having run a lot of the stuff in a variety of developers - some of it creatively misused to produce strong granularity, it's pretty hard to truly screw it up in ID-11/ D-76 so that it's unprintable (and Rodinal or Ilfosol 3 for that matter - and there are boring emulsion-related reasons why) - in fact it's also got the most comprehensive documentation of any current Ilford emulsion - such that you can immediately tell that the proclamation about highlight density upthread would probably require a 30-50% processing time error. Ilford's statement should be read as 'latitude for optimal quality' not exposure latitude - the rest of this thread is some rather desperate opinion fishing from people who ought to know enough to spot & weed-out gross process/ exposure errors and not wilfully mix up opinions about early generations of Tmax 400 (which could have somewhat narrower process latitude than its predecessors - and a longer straight line reaching higher densities rather than significant roll-off) with Delta technology - which was explicitly designed to counteract the potential for runaway highlight density in the hands of inattentive users. Ilford knows quite a bit about Development Inhibition effects & it's pretty clear that Delta seeks to enact them inasmuch as you can in a non-chromogenic emulsion.