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?

  • demesisx@infosec.pub
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    1 day ago

    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!OPA
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      12 hours ago

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

  • alleycat@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

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

    • Bilb!OPA
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      12 hours 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.

    • Bilb!OPA
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      12 hours ago

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