Experimenting with Ilford Delta ASA 3200 B&W Film

So it has been a long time since I’ve shot film… and it pretty much was always colour. Part of this was in prep for Burning Man. i.e. how to take a photo in the dark (and part was “hey, what cool tricks can I do”).

Reading up on film, I found Ilford Delta 3200 Professional as something that could be interesting to shoot with. I’d read a bit about it, checked out the flickr group and decided what the heck, it’s only money.

I grabbed my dad’s old Ricoh SLR and took some photos – trying to learn how this film responds, what I can and can’t do with it along with developing my own skills.

I got Michaels to develop and scan (hey, they do B&W processing in Melbourne in a reasonable time frame)… ignoring the advice of some that doing it yourself gets you best results (anyone for a Laundry/Brewery/Darkroom?)

While at Rrose, I took this shot which I quite like:

Rrose drink
If you look at full size you see the wonderful graininess that is this film:

F1000023_crop1

But a simple GIMP Despeckle gets you:

F1000023_crop1_despeckle

(and a much smaller JPEG file size). But I do kinda like the speckle.

The amazing thing to note is that this was shot handheld with a not particularly fast lens and without any artificial light beyond what was at rrose at 9 or 10pm in August.