If you expose a contin-tone negative with flat lighting (say 7-8 stops), what should happen if you develop it (in a regular developer) for somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30+ minutes, i.e., a LONG time? Does a point of no return come, or does the development continue until you end up with a black and white negative (no gray)?

In my search for "The Look" which still eludes me, I've sunk to asking ridiculous questions...

-- shawn (shawngibson_prophoto@yahoo.com), June 07, 2000

Answers

Yes Shawn, you do come out with some pearlers! I have no idea what the answer is but how about you try it and tell us what you find. Just don't use Rodinal 1:100 as the normal development time is longer than that I have heard!

-- Nigel Smith (nlandgl@eisa.net.au), June 07, 2000.

I remember having read that there is a "gamma infinity" for each film/developer combination which will not change any more after a specific development time. So some films might end up w/o any midtones at all while others will just be pretty contrasty.

If you want pure b&w contrast, you might use repro film (such as Macophot Ort 25) or Kodak Tchnical Pan, developed for a long time in a suitable developer. But I think you will have more room for creative experiment when starting from conventional negatives. A full-tone negative gives you all the choice to eliminate or extract specific tones. If, otoh, the film is developed to pure b&w contrast, you have to decide on where to draw the line between the two when you shoot.

-- Thomas Wollstein (thomas_wollstein@web.de), June 08, 2000.

Shawn: You might be interested to read my article "Mortensen Revisited" at http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Mortensen/mortensen.html. Mortensen's theory was that the best gradation was obtained from negatives of very short-scale subjects that were slightly underexposed and developed to gamma-infinity. He chose scenes with about a 4-stop scale and expanded them to a full 7 stops. I should note that Mortensen was the mortal enemy of the f/64 group. Many of his photographs were tacky and tasteless. However, he did some beautiful nudes and he really did have a good understanding of the complexities of the photographic process. Contemporary photographers can still learn from his comments on local contrast and gradation. His results are difficult to reproduce with modern films and developers, but the techniques (and modern substitutes) are worth experimenting with.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edbuffaloe@unblinkingeye.com), June 08, 2000.

"Mortensen's theory was that the best gradation was obtained from negatives of very short-scale subjects that were slightly underexposed and developed to gamma-infinity. He chose scenes with about a 4-stop scale and expanded them to a full 7 stops"

Ed, this, and your article, are both extremely intriguing. I think this might just be what I'm looking for. See "http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00362r" for another similar question...

Now to get some really flat lighting happening...6 Octabanks and HMI's and...ah heck just zap me to a planet with three stars and gimme some transparent sheets and a solarium (an Andromedarium?)...

-- shawn (shawngibson_prophoto@yahoo.com), June 08, 2000.

To begin with, I would not consider a 7-8 stop range of brightness as flat lighting. My guide is as follows ; most modern films can actually handle a brightness range of 4 - 4.5 stops, i.e. from zone 3 to zone 7.5. If that is the range I am looking at, and if the placement of a mid-tone value where I want it will allow the shadows and highlights to fall appropriately within that range, I will go for an N EI and development.

If neither of those two conditions hold, then either N+ or N- will apply.

For example, if the brightness range is, say, 3 stops, and I want to emphasise texture by expanding the range of local contrast in the mid- tones, I would go for an N+ EI and development. This might mean rating the film EI at 1/3rd - 1 stop higher, and lengthening development by 30 - 40%.

Alternatively, if the brightness range is, say, 7 stops, of which, say, 4 stops will fall as highlights because of where I place the mid- tone that determines exposure, I would look to an N-2 to compress the highlights to a 2 - 2.5 stop range. If I placed my midtone elsewhere, e.g. such that 3 stops fell as highlights, this would probably mean an N-1 contraction. N-, for me, entails rating the film at a lower EI - 2/3rds - 1 2/3rds of a stop lower, and reducing development by 20 - 40%.

At the end of the day, it depends what you want to do. N+ can be used to emphasise texture and expand the range of contrast in the mid-tones, and the lengthened development time will produce rather more grain, and enable you to manage edge effects - this is what I described to you earlier in your recent question on Agfa APX100 - but you have to be careful where the range of highlights will fall, as you do not wnat these to go beyond zone 7.5.

Alternatively, N- can be used to reduce texture and contrast in the mid-tones, allowing a sort of fuzzy glow in portraiture, for example.

I hope I haven't confused you, and I am sure that some will disagree with the above, not least with the starting premise that films can only handle a meaningful range from zone 3 - zone 7.5, but it seems to work in practice for me.

-- fw (finneganswake@altavista.net), June 08, 2000.

N+ can be used to emphasise texture and expand the range of contrast in the mid-tones, and the lengthened development time will produce rather more grain, and enable you to manage edge effects

Thanks fw. This is what I'm looking for. I just realized I'm looking for one thing, and all these posts are just different ways of trying both to ask and to ascertain just what it is in my head (other than cobwebs...). One thing which bothers me is the possibility of actually getting a scene to 4 stops top to bottom (w/ detail). I wonder if, under most conditions, I might have to underexpose the subject a little to avoid blownout highs (which I used to get all lthe time until I switch to major N- dev't)...

-- shawn (shawngibson_prophoto@yahoo.com), June 09, 2000.

I have no quarrel with what Finnegan says above. 7-8 stops is a normally-lit scene. In Texas, I'm more likely to encounter scenes with 10 or more stops, but Mortensen's arguments convinced me that it is difficult to get good gradation from a negative that has been given N- processing (he says the compression takes place in the high values, where the most interesting tonalities are). So I have taken the PMK route that allows me to get printable detail in all those extra zones with normal development. Occasionally I still get a negative with a scale that is hard to print, so I resort to SLIMT (selective latent image manipulation technique, or latent image bleaching), dodging, burning, selective bleaching, or whatever else it takes. Most of my experiments with Mortensen's 7-D technique have been failures, with a few (spectacular) exceptions. David Kachel states that with modern materials contrast reduction is best handled by film manipulation (referring to SLIMT rather than N- development), whereas contrast enhancement is best handled by paper manipulation.

-- Ed Buffaloe (edbuffaloe@unblinkingeye.com), June 09, 2000.

Thanks Ed. As an addendum to this question, am I correct in assuming the best filtration to knock down the number of stops on a human subject/gray-ish backgrounds would be something in the order of a 2-3 stop blue filter? Assuming, of course, they're not wearing blue...

-- shawn (shawngibson_prophoto@yahoo.com), June 09, 2000.

Does SLIMY (couldn't resist, sorry...) work with MF negs? It seems more an LF technique...

-- shawn (shawngibson_prophoto@yahoo.com), June 09, 2000.

Shawn: I can't help but think that you will be defeating your own purpose if you use a blue filter to reduce contrast and then overdevelop to increase it. Blue filtration has never given me very pleasing results--all I get is loss of detail and general image degradation. I'd save the overdevelopment technique for genuinely low- contrast scenes.

I see no reason why the SLIMT (I agree it's an unfortunate designation--I prefer latent image bleaching) should not work with medium format films.

But now I'm curious--exactly what "look" are you seeking?

-- Ed Buffaloe (edbuffaloe@unblinkingeye.com), June 09, 2000.

Just something 'different'. I think it's similar to Roversi's LF low- contrast ads for Philosophie. But I've never actually seen what is in my head here printed, hence all this theoretical meandering. I think if I ever actually ACHIEVED something I had IN MY HEAD, I would either give up or start mass producing the same garbage over and over again. In that regard, I hope I never find EXACTLY what I want.

-- shawn (shawngibson_prophoto@yahoo.com), June 09, 2000.

I'm a total darkroom hacker [or is that hack...] but living in the middle of the desert as I do, our tap water comes out of the faucet at about 80*f in the summer. Before I started cooling off the chem.s I would follow the extrapolated dev. times for that temp, and I always got VERY contrasty neg.s. I have always thought that it was due to the high temp. Maybe you could try your chem.s at +100*f or so and see what happens.

Probably not the answer, just some empirical evidence to chew on.

-- Robert Anderson (randerson1@uswest.net), June 09, 2000.

In response to your original point, Shawn, you will probably find tht really long development will increase the fog level (subject shadow), without doing much to the dark parts on the negative (subject highlights). Hence the contrast decreases. It also increases grain, of course. (All this occurs with conventional developers, I can't speak for PMK).

-- Alan Gibson (Alan@snibgo.com), June 09, 2000.

Paper is the limiting factor in the making of any image. Film can hold 15+ stops of usable information but paper can't. Normal papers can hold 5. You can use any of the films range but not more than 5 stops of it. So say with stand development where the film has produced all the density it is able to, you can still only use 5 stops of this density gradient. That is why most people seem to use a 5 stop range in processing their film. Anything more is just a waste of density. Why produce a 7 or 8 stop density when your printing material can only use 5? By maximizing the negative to 5 stops where we have recorded enough info for the paper we can now taylor the prints tonal range by manipulating the contrast of the paper to extend this apparent range. I think I elucidated that thought coherently enough. James

-- james (james_mickelson@hotmail.com), June 10, 2000.

Shawn ; I think I understand what you want - a beautifully graduated palette of grey mid-tones, with well defined blacks and glowing highlights, underpinned by sharpness, but with a grainy "mask" that appears integral with the sharpness. I think that achieving this is entirely possible.

To simplify things, you basically have two choices in black and white film & developer combinations ;

(i) a slow contrasty film with high resolution ; the best developer is probably something like Rodinal 1:50, or D76 1:1, which will enough compensating effect to control contrast, and whose emphasis on sharpness at the expense of grain is more than offset by the high resolution of the film, or (ii) a higher speed film, which will have proportionately more "latitude", but higher grain ; standard developers would be D76 full strength, or indeed Microphen if you want to get the full emulsion speed. Although these developers are called "fine-grain", they contain a solvent which dissolves the sharp edges of the silver grains, and hence they might be better described as diffuse grain developers.

May I suggest to you that you are having difficulty achieving what you want because you are using very high resolution films (TMax100 / Technical Pan), where it is difficult to force the grain to appear, and which can have a tendency to get very contrasty at the expense of local contrast in the mid-tones.

Why not try to approach your problem from a different angle by using a higher speed film, which you can actively manipulate for (a) the range of local contrast in the mid-tones and (ii) perceived sharpness. I think you are using 35mm / 120, so here are two film developer combinations that might get you what you want (try to keep the development temperature consistent, or you introduce an unknown variable) ;

Tri-X, in D76 1:1, at 20oC ;

N+2 ; rate at EI 600 ; 16 minutes

N+1 ; rate at EI 400 ; 12 minutes

N+2 ; rate at EI 200 ; 9 minutes

N+2 ; rate at EI 100 ; 7 minutes

N+2 ; rate at EI 50 ; 5.5 minutes

Fuji Neopan 400, in full strength Microphen, at 20oC ;

N+2 ; rate at EI 1250 ; 11.5 minutes

N+1 ; rate at EI 1000 ; 8 minutes

N+2 ; rate at EI 640 ; 6 minutes

N+2 ; rate at EI 320 ; 4.5 minutes

N+2 ; rate at EI 160 ; 3.5 minutes

Why dont you try the N+1 shown above? As you are then pushing the highlights out about 1 zone, you need to be careful with exposure placement. For example, you might normally put white skin tones on zone 6.5, or thereabouts. If you go for N+1, you will need to place these on zone 5.5, and the extra development will push these out one zone - and in doing so will expand the range of local contrast in the mid-tones. The same sort of principle will apply to N+2, but I wouldnt place highlights at less than zone 5, and in any case, I think youll get what you want with N+1. [NB ; this assumes that you are happy with the shadows, which should really be determining your exposure - Im assuming here that they are 2-4 zones lower than the skin-tones].

Now, sharpness. Agitation for the above times is constantly for the first minute (to minimise the risk of any streaking), and then 5-10 seconds every 30 seconds thereafter. However, with the longer times attached to N+, you have more ability to induce "edge effects", which can dramatically affect the perceived sharpness of your final print, even if the reality is that it is less sharp than it appears. Trust me on this - I have Tri-X prints which you would swear are much sharper than the same print rendered on Tmax100, even though examining the negative tells a different story. You might try reducing agitation to every two minutes after the first minute of constant agitation, and lengthening the development time by about 10% to compensate.

Personally, I would avoid unusual filters such as blue, as it will simply introduce another variable into the above. I would stick a yellow-green filter on the lense and leave it there until I got consistent results, from which I could then judge the effect of more deeply cutting filters. (Unless such a filter would affect the tonal range in the image - e.g. if your subject is wearing yellow-green clothes, or god forbid, is highly jaundiced (only kidding). Apply the filter exposure factor after youve been through all the exposure placement stuff, and determined your zone 5 exposure, or alternatively take it out of the EI before you start.

Good luck ; let me know how you get on.

-- fw (finneganswake@altavista.net), June 10, 2000.

Oops - how on earth did that happen? The tables above should go in a sequence as follows ;

N+2

N+1

N

N-1

N-2

Maybe the moderator could correct this, in order to avoid any unnecesary confusion.

-- fw (finneganswake@altavista.net), June 11, 2000.

Thanks fw (&everyone else), I'm gonna take some of your advice here, fw. I think you're right about the paradox/inconsistency I'm creating for myself (wrong film). Hell, I may even start using Delta 3200 in MF for some of this. You did nail it verbally, what I want, much better than I myself have been able to yet. As Joyce says, Ineluctable etc...:-)

I'll be shooting with these thoughts next week...and get back...

-- shawn (shawngibson_prophoto@yahoo.com), June 13, 2000.

I printed this off last night since I don't have a lot of time at work to peruse (abuse, confuse...). There is a TON of incredible info here, guys. You really left me with whole universes to explore.

Thanks especially Alan for your little comment, which opened my eyes to a whole new (correct...) way of seeing contrast as it applies to film.

& fw: I just bought 10 rolls of 120 Neopan; gonna soup to your specs and numbers using flat windowlight...I'll let y'all know how it goes...

-- shawn (shawngibson_prophoto@yahoo.com), June 15, 2000.