With September came the Delta Def Jam… like the FP4Party, TMAX Party, and Neopantastic! before it, it’s a community celebration of all things Ilford Delta. I’m not a big fan of Ilford Delta 100 or 400 (I vastly prefer FP4 and HP5+), so I decided to go with 3200,
I started strong, but didn’t finish the roll until the 19th, blowing any hope of really participating completely. Oh well.
I shot most of the roll at work, starting with my usual test shot.
It’s hard to get streaking taillights at 6400 ISO, and very easy to totally blow highlights.
From there, I tried to perform some Gossagesque seeing, document our mostly empty office. Most of these were utter failures, but this one might be close.
I’m not quite there yet…
I took a selfy, but somehow managed to blink. Ugh.
I turned to the window, and was thankful for the blistering 1/4000th on the FM3a.
And then I looked down… This building is shaped like an X, with entrances at 3 points where the legs meet. Our office takes up all of one wing, and part of another, making it easy to look down on a little pick up and drop off point down below.
I think this vantage might become a new favorite… There’s movement from humans, coming and going down there; there’s light and shadow and forms, organic and manmade, and a good bit going on. I like it, though it can be tricky to keep myself out of the reflection, especially given my tendency to wear light-colored dress shirts. If my wife’s insistence that I look better in darker shirts isn’t enough to get me to change (it’s apparently not… shame on me), maybe this will be.
6400 is fast. Too fast for some things, but surprisingly useful for others. I developed the roll in D76, stock, at 68F, for 13 minutes, with 2-4 agitations every minute. The grain is heavy, but acceptable, and I think next time I might soup it in Ilfotec HC or maybe Rodinal to see what effect different developers have.
And I’ll have some further opportunities… The Delta Def Jam runs from September-November, and I have two more chances (and so need to pick up another roll of 3200… I don’t think I have any other Delta in the fridge). Shoot weeks are October 2-8 and November 6-12, with post weeks rolling around October 12-22 and November 20-26. Feel free to join in! Like the other @Emulsive-hosted film parties, the Delta Def Jam is a good time!
