this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
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Film Photography

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Accidentally wound up with Ilford Delta ISO 3200 film. Can I use it, or should I return it? (lem.monster)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by bilb@lem.monster to c/analog@lemmy.world
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I have recently started getting into film photography and I'm still learning the ropes. After buying a variety of color and black and white films to experiment with, I noticed that I somehow accidentally bought a couple of rolls of very high speed Ilford Delta ISO 3200 film. At this point, all I have is a Kodak Ektar H35N and an Olympus Pen-EES 2 which has a max ISO of 400. Is the Ilford film useless to me, or can it be used at lower speeds in certain conditions?

EDIT: This is tangential, but I was originally going to ask this question on Reddit instead of Lemmy because the conventional wisdom is that Lemmy isn't useful yet for more niche topics, but I thought "why not try Lemmy first anyway," and I'm glad I did. I found the most active film photography community on Lemmyverse.net (which hadn't yet even federated to my small instance) and it paid off. How nice!

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[–] demesisx@infosec.pub 17 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

You could just get the meter reading then close down the aperture by around 3 stops.

  • ISO 800 is one stop more sensitive than ISO 400
  • ISO 1600 is two stops more sensitive than ISO 400
  • ISO 3200 is 3 stops more sensitive than ISO 400.

It would be a great film to use if you want to really lean into graininess or play with exposure times. Sebastiao Segado-vibe grain unlocked if you play with push or pull processing too.

Salgado uses tri-x 400 rated at ei 200 for extended tonal range and shadow detail.

[–] bilb@lem.monster 2 points 3 days ago

Thanks, I'll hold onto it and give it a try once I know what I'm doing a bit better.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Delta 3200 has long been regarded as an ISO 800 film that does well when pushed to 3200. You’ll be fine shooting it at 400 and, if properly developed, should yield some fine grain.

Head over to the Massive Dev Chart and find the times for your preferred developer + ISO combo.

[–] bilb@lem.monster 2 points 1 day ago

That's a great resource I was unaware of! Thank you.

[–] alleycat@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You can pull the film to ISO 400. Make sure you can find times for your developer.

[–] bilb@lem.monster 2 points 3 days ago

With black and white, I'm actually interested in doing the development myself. So once I'm comfortable doing it by the numbers I'll probably give that a shot. Thanks.

[–] CommissarVulpin@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You could experiment with astrophotography, maybe try and catch some star trails with it.

[–] bilb@lem.monster 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's something I hadn't considered. I'll look into it. My naive expectation is that I would need better optics.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 2 points 2 days ago

Beware long exposure times. Rated ISO will drop (sometimes drastically) for exposures longer than 1 s.