Grain at Last! Ilford Delta 3200 in Rodinal.

Or alternatively (suggested by Nick in the previous post’s comment section) ‘The Search for the Holy Grain’.

Worbarrow Bay with Portland just visible on the horizon on the left. I thought this very heavy grain may be caused by under/over exposure but the negative looks fine.

In an attempt to get some really grainy results I’ve been trying some faster films with little success – I want a really grainy image like those obtainable using now discontinued films such as Kodak TMax 3200, Scotch 3M 1000 or even Kodak Hi Speed IR.

The central portion of the above shot. That’s a lot of grain… I was after grain but maybe a bit less than this!

At 1600 and 3200 ASA Ilford Delta 3200 is (annoyingly) very well-behaved when developed in ID11, so the next step is Rodinal which sharpens up detail at the expense of harder grain.

Tyneham church entrance. The sky has overexposed – as I took a meter reading from the ground here – and the grain hasn’t shown on the scan. Interesting.

The centre of the previous shot – grainy goodness in spadefulls!

All shots from one roll in an OM2N using a 17mm f3.5 lens in manual mode as the max ASA setting is 1600 – so set the exposure and take a stop off. The Rodinal was at a 1+25 dilution at 20 degrees c for 11 minutes.

Centre weighted meter reading and some grain in the sky as it hasn’t overexposed. This is just about right.

The grain is most evident in skies when no exposure compensation has been set for the main subject. If a meter reading is taken from the ground (rather than the whole scene) the clouds become over exposed and the grain can’t be seen – so a choice of technique.

On a fairly bright winter’s day exposures are possible at 3200 using 1/1000th of a second and f16 to f11. On a brighter day a red 25A or polarizer would be needed – unless your SLR can shoot faster than 1/1000th of a second or you lens run to f22/f32 of course.

Sorry – another shot of the same building. I got a bit carried away here.

These were all taken an Tyneham and Worbarrow Bay in Dorset. The ruins are what’s left of a small village which was taken over by the army as a combat training zone in World War 2 with the promise to the villages and landowner that it would all be returned – it never was.

Anyway, back to this film/developer combo. Well I can’t complain that it’s not grainy. What’s odd is how variable the appearance of the grain is. In some cases using the same exposure for different shots of the same subject produces markedly different grain, even though the negatives look fine. Shots with lots of mid-tones seem to show the most grain when normally exposed, highlights when overexposed are fine and shadows are fine too surprisingly though the darker greys are a bit ‘grungy’.

Apart from the first picture in this series, the rest of these are just what I was after so I’ll stick with this for a few more rolls. Oddly several shots earlier in the roll showed the same ultra graininess but all the subsequent shots had less obtrusive grain :-

Another shot from earlier in the roll.

So – a few mysteries and mishaps, but I like this a lot (you may not!) and it’s good to finally find a film/dev combo which achieves the look I was after.

Hope you find this useful, thanks for looking!

p.s. There a reviews of lots of other films on the film, camera and lens review index tab.