The River Lea near Broxbourne (my first roll of Ilford Delta 3200)

A couple of months ago I asked for some recommendations for fast black & white films on the toycamera.com website. I enjoy photographing the interiors of churches and obviously ASA 400 film has it's limitations even though I got some nice shots of Ely Cathedral earlier in the year. Recently though any such attempts with a holga have been failures.

The film recommended to me was Ilford Delta 3200 and I was particularly drawn to this film 1. because of it's grainyness (an effect I was looking for) and 2, because it can be pushed to ASA 25000, something I had never even thought possible.

I bought 10 rolls and took a couple of rolls out on a cycle ride one Friday morning in November. My wife was away and I still had a couple of days holiday to take (I get five more days than her so these are my photography days!) so I was all set up for a good day's shooting. The morning was dark and November like so it was a great day to test the film - low light and loads of atmosphere.

At home I processed the film using DDX (1+4 dilution) for 25 minutes at 20C as recommended by the Massive Development Chart on Digital Truth, a great online resource by the way.

This shot has lots of grain and contrast and is my favourite of that morning.

Not sure about the composition but the frame captures the feeling of the wintry riverbank quite well.

Overall a success I thought and I have since taken some more shots with my Holga 120wpc which I will post here in due course. Of course I haven't been near a church since I bought the Delta 3200....but it's a great "winter" film nonetheless, particularly when pushed to extreme levels.

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