February 25th 2021. Thursday. 7pm. Vancouver – Nicole: previously I had taken my Rolleicord Vb out with Ilford Delta 3200 and used it to take photos of building entrance ways at night. However, the widest aperture on that camera is f3.5, the slowest shutter speed I was willing to go was 1/60 (I’m hand-holding). My light meter was saying I needed one more stop, but regardless I shot f3.5 at 1/60. Once developed the pictures were as expected – slightly blurry, obviously not quite what I wanted. (As I’ve mentioned many times before…) I have a good friend who doesn’t mind loaning me cameras, so I borrowed his illustrious Rolleiflex 2.8! And with that I was able to shoot my entrance ways at f2.8 at 1/60. I made the grave error of only packing one roll of film that night and saw photos virtually everywhere, it was a rare dry warm February night.
March 17th 2021. Wednesday. 10am. Vancouver – Nicole: I got the roll back and it looks great. That one stop from f3.5 to f2.8 made all the difference to my hand holding! The Ilford Delta has always been one of my favourite films to shoot. I love the grains, fine like sand, pronounced yet not distracting (like grain can be with outdated or pushed/pulled film). I’d likely shoot it year round if most of my vintage cameras didn’t cap out at 1/500 shutter speed.
Epilogue: I absolutely NEED to buy myself a Rolleiflex 2.8.
Here are a few comparisons of the photos I took between the f/3.5 and the f/2.8.
Rolleiflex f/3.5
Rolleiflex f/2.8
Rolleiflex f/2.8
Rolleiflex f/3.5
Rolleiflex f/2.8
Rolleiflex f/3.5
Rolleiflex f/2.8
