Portstewart Bay on Ilford Delta 3200

A couple of days ago I went out late afternoon in order to finish a film I had lying about in the 'Blad - Ilford Delta 3200.  The sun was going down so I headed to Portstewart and set the camera up on the tripod with the 250mm Tele-Tessar on it.  It was, it has to be said, absolutely freezing - a substantial wind chill.  That day I was certainly suffering for my art :)

The camera was pointing directly at the sun - OK to do since it was masked by light cloud for most of the time but even so it was a high contrast scene.  I had used a bit of the film already, exposed at 1000iso for some strange reason but that set the speed for the rest of the film.  I spot-metered the sun and opened up two stops so that the highlights wouldn't be blown.  The shadows I just had to take what I could get but in the end letting them mostly fall to black created an atmospheric shot.

Ilford suggest 7mins for 800iso and 8 for 1600iso in DD-X diluted 1:4.  In the end I decided on 8.5 minutes - roughly equating to a speed of 2000iso.  I was happy with the result, since good detail was retained in the highlights:

Winter Sun, Portstewart Bay, January 2020.  Ilford Delta 3200@800iso on Warmtone fibre paper

With such a well-lit scene a fast film like Delta 3200 wasn't the right film to use - I was down at f22 most of the time.  HP5+ would be have been a better choice.  But I feel a bit more confident now using Delta 3200.  I'm going back to the Sheep Man shortly to document the start of the shearing so I'll use Delta 3200 for that, since we'll be indoors and using available light - last time HP5 was just a bit slow, I found.