Working with Delta 100

Some days ago, I was contacted by another Norwegian photographer who has a collaboration with Ilford Photo. He kindly sent med some rolls of Ilford Delta100, some DD-X developer, Fixer and Wetting agent to try out. Today I went out with my Bronica ETR to try it out. Before I go any further, visit his amazing gallery on Flickr and read his posts here.

WordPress: https://bjorn-joachimsen.com

When I heard that I would be sent Delta100, I was thrilled. When I took up analog photography again some years ago, Delta 100 was one of the films that really rekindled my interest in film-photography and I find it to be one of the best films I know about. The smooth and soft T-grain structure gives pleasant results. even when developed in Rodinal. In most cases I shoot Delta 100 at 50, but today I chose to go at box speed, because of the lighting conditions.

My location for this outing was Tallodden. A beautiful little place not too far from where I live, and I brought my Bronica ETR, some square filters and a tripod. I always mount the Bronica on a tripod. It is too heavy to shoot steadily by hand, especially at shallow apertures or longer shutter speeds.

There is something about walking around with a proper MF SLR like this. It makes people interested, and I had a shot chat with a nice elderly man who was out for a little stroll along the lake. He told me that he had not seen anyone with such equipment around that area for years, and asked me all sorts of questions about the camera, my lens, film, plans and where I would post my images for him to see.

I spent some time scouting around for interesting subjects that would give me a smooth and calm mood to my images. I wanted the fine grain the Delta100 gives to be one of the main focus on my shots. I chose to use a yellow filter for most of the images to boost some contrast, and get the most out of the range. But I swapped for an orange filter for shots where I wanted the «silky water» effect, and more depth in the range.

I then went home and developed.

This is the first time I have ever used DD-X. Actually I have never used Ilford Developers before, so I was very excited to see what the grain structure and the range would be like. This is a shoot where I would normally have gone for Kodak Xtol, and I am comparing a bit to what I would have expected from Xtol.

I am very happy with my results, and I am happy to see the smooth and lovely grain in this shoot, and I think the DD-X brought it out beautifully. I still have more rolls to shoot and develop in this developer, so I will not come with any analysis of any kind based on my limited knowledge, but so far I am very happy.

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Once again, thank you for sending me films and chemistry to try out. More entries with this film and developer will come. Also a video of me making darkroom prints of some of these images.

Stay tuned