> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.grainpress.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Ilford Puts Delta 400 on a Clear Base for a Limited Run
- URL: https://www.grainpress.com/delta-400-collectors-edition/
- Published: 2026-09-23T22:39:11.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-24T00:02:07.000Z
- Description: Harman changed what the film is coated on rather than what it is coated with, and is selling a small quantity to find out whether photographers will pay for the difference.
- Author: Grainpress Editors
- Tags: NEWS, Film, 35mm, Industry, #fmt-brief

Harman Technology is selling Ilford Delta 400 Professional Collector's Edition, a 135-only run in a black cassette and a black carton. The film is coated on a clearer roll-film base carrying anti-halation protection, a construction Harman says has not appeared on an Ilford black-and-white 35mm film before. Speed, grain character and development times are unchanged, so nothing changes in the tank.

Halation is the effect the base is working against. Light that passes through the emulsion and the base strikes the back surface, reflects, and re-exposes the emulsion from behind, spreading a soft halo outward from anything bright in the frame — a street lamp at night, a window in a dark interior, the sun caught on chrome. Material that absorbs that returning light suppresses the halo. Harman attributes to the new construction improvements in dynamic range, shadow detail, halation and sharpness, and in how the film scans, and describes them as subtle.

A clearer base has a second consequence Harman has not claimed. Kosmo Foto reports that it makes the film developable as a black-and-white slide, which nothing else in the Ilford range allows: a positive projected or viewed by transmitted light needs a support that is not itself tinted.

The size of the run has not been stated beyond "very limited," and the reason for it has. Answering photographers on its own Instagram, Harman said the edition is a test of whether a market exists for the clearer base, and that a good response could return it as a regular product at a price likely higher than the existing film, because it costs more to make.