Courtenay Place – Ilford Delta 3200

I’ve always wanted to try high-speed black and white film just to see how grainy the film would be in low-light conditions. These images were shot one night on Wellington’s Courtenay Place using a Voigtlander Bessa R3A rangefinder. Shooting on the Voigtlander  and using black and white, 3200 ISO film gave the images a gritty, documentary quality suitable for the late night hedonism and drunken, boisterous atmosphere that makes for a typical weekend on Courtenay Place. The rangefinder is a small, manual operated camera, ideally suited to candid, reportage style photography, where discretion is required. As you can see, some of the shots are rather grainy (bad exposure on my part) and getting a correct exposure in situations where there was little light and fast-moving action was definitely challenging if you didn’t want to miss the moment, especially when shutter speeds were down to 1/15 second.