Best development method for high contrast scenes?

brian steinberger · Sep 15, 2009

I'm looking for a method to being to experiment with to tame contrast on high contrast scenes. I have a shoot in mind this winter which will involve dimly lit interiors and sunlight coming through doors and windows. I'm assuming once shadow placement is set, highlights will fall on around zone IX, X or XI. So I'm looking for a process similar to a N-2 or N-3 or even more.

So far I've experimented with stand and semi-stand development with Rodinal 1:100. I've photographed similar scenes around my house. Neither method was effective at taming highlights. I had very dense highlights.

So I've recently begun reading about two-bath and water-bath development. Seems water-bath development is obsolete and insufficient with todays modern emulsions. But the two-bath development seems to sounds intriguing. I have no experience with it, so I was wondering what others experiences are as far as highlight compensation under high contrast scenes.

The only other methods I can think of are using pyro based developers, which I've dealt with in the past and am not super crazy about. Though DiXactol and Pyrocat at high dilutions with semi-stand development sound promising, but I'm afraid I'll be disappointing like I was with Rodinal.

BTW.. I'm not looking for the perfect negative to make a straight print the final print. I'm sure I'll have to use printing controls (pre-flashing, local bleaching) to help control highlights, but I would like to know the best method to start to deal with high contrast scenes of the type I've stated, and I can play with it from there. Thanks everyone!

BetterSense · Sep 15, 2009

XP2 super

keithwms · Sep 15, 2009

If you have really high contrast then you can use POTA developer. It's a very short-life, one shot developer, but it is easy to mix and is supercompensating. I mean, it can handle pretty much anything. I have known it handle scenes with well upwards of 12 stops of range- up to 20 or so are mentioned in the literature.

Shawn Dougherty · Sep 15, 2009

brian steinberger said:
So far I've experimented with stand and semi-stand development with Rodinal 1:100. I've photographed similar scenes around my house. Neither method was effective at taming highlights. I had very dense highlights.

Brian, I suggest giving semi-stand with Rodinal another try. 1:100 works great for "normal" scenes but for something like you describe I would use 1:200 and give the shadows plenty of exposure. Hope this helps. Shawn

brian steinberger · Sep 15, 2009

keithwms said:
If you have really high contrast then you can use POTA developer. It's a very short-life, one shot developer, but it is easy to mix and is supercompensating. I mean, it can handle pretty much anything. I have known it handle scenes with well upwards of 12 stops of range- up to 20 or so are mentioned in the literature.

Keith, POTA sounds interesting. Any more info? Formula? Times & agitation?

brian steinberger · Sep 15, 2009

Shawn Dougherty said:
Brian, I suggest giving semi-stand with Rodinal another try. 1:100 works great for "normal" scenes but for something like you describe I would use 1:200 and give the shadows plenty of exposure. Hope this helps. Shawn

Shawn, I've never used it 1:200. Do you have experience with very high contrast scenes and that dilution? Also, with your semi-stand use, how long are you developing and what are your intervals between agitation?

nick mulder · Sep 15, 2009

http://www.digitaltruth.com/data/pota.php

Thats the soup I've mixed ... If I recall it was developed (pun intended, in retrospect at least) I think by the US military photographers to get exposures of atmospheric atomic/nuclear tests - I came across it when looking into Harold Edgertons work...

sanking · Sep 15, 2009

Try two-bath development.

Have a look at this thread on the LF forum.

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=52913

Sandy King

Shawn Dougherty · Sep 16, 2009

brian steinberger said:
Shawn, I've never used it 1:200. Do you have experience with very high contrast scenes and that dilution? Also, with your semi-stand use, how long are you developing and what are your intervals between agitation?

Yes, I've shot some night scenes lit by one security light in snow and dry, off the hook contrast.

I used Rodinal 1:200 semi-stand, roll film for 40 minutes. The procedure was agitation for the first 1.5minutes (including pouring the developer and tapping to remove bubbles) then a second agitation for 30 seconds (including bubble tap) at the halfway point. When I do this I place shadows high on zone iv or even on zone v.

(there was a url link here which no longer exists) is a link to one example. More somewhere I don't have on the web. Hope this helps. I will say I just read about POTA and that sounds interesting as well. Best. Shawn

keithwms · Sep 16, 2009

brian steinberger said:
Keith, POTA sounds interesting. Any more info? Formula? Times & agitation?

All you do is buy it and mix it

The times I've used it, I did normal agitation. Some suggested times were provided with the mix and they worked well.

Mike Wilde · Sep 16, 2009

POTA It is outlined in the Darkroom Cookbook. Formula by Marilyn Levy - Miitary-scentific photography chief at some or other proving ground in the mid 60's.

It is very dilute with its developing agent: 1.5g phenidone with low (only30g) sodium sulfite per liter, so sort of like d-23 with it's 7.5g metol, 100g sulfite, where phenidone is substituted for the metol ( I think of phenidone being 10X more powerful per gram than metol/elon, and less alkali to slow down the development activity. Low sulfite also lowers the restrainer action, so there will be fog, which Levy would just increase printing exposure to overcome it. .

I have tried another variant, t/o-xdr-1, I think it was called, which lets me shoot lith film to be used as an unsharp mask, and also exposed in the camera to get continous tome negs of high contrast scenes.

Neal · Sep 16, 2009

Dear Brian,

I suggest looking into pre-flashing (or pre-exposure of) the film. The concept is the same as pre-flashing paper but considerably more powerful. A very usable description can be found in "The Negative".

Neal Wydra

Bosaiya · Sep 16, 2009

Shawn Dougherty said:
Brian, I suggest giving semi-stand with Rodinal another try. 1:100 works great for "normal" scenes but for something like you describe I would use 1:200 and give the shadows plenty of exposure. Hope this helps. Shawn

What do you recommend for development times? How critical is that time? In other words do you find that you need to experiment a lot with different films or is it all pretty consistent?

Shawn Dougherty · Sep 16, 2009

Bosaiya said:
What do you recommend for development times? How critical is that time? In other words do you find that you need to experiment a lot with different films or is it all pretty consistent?

My only experience at this dilution is with Tmax100 and APX100. Both had similar times, APX slightly longer. My experience with semi-stand in general has shown that time is not AS critical compared with other processes. I AM NOT AN EXPERT by any measure, based on my experience only.... Hope this helps. Shawn

c6h6o3 · Sep 16, 2009

I've seen some incredible high contrast work using compensating development by Steve Sherman. In particular, his 7x17 made at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, where it is really dark (EV<1) with sunlight streaming in through the windows. There is tone everywhere in the print and it's got to span 12 zones. He developed the film using the semi-stand method in pyrocat HD. I think his normal dilution is somewhere around 1.5:1:175, but he may use a greater dilution for extreme compensation.

One advantage to using pyrocat for this is the ability to vary the amount of carbonate in the working solution. This supports the shadows while simultaneously taming the extreme highlights. You might try dropping Steve a line. He's always very helpful.

c6h6o3 · Sep 16, 2009

Wait. I found the picture I referred to on his website. It's the one in the middle, From the 2nd Floor Cell Block. And man, it is dark in that place. Be sure to enable popups in your browser, so that you can see it enlarged.

Richard Wasserman · Sep 16, 2009

I have had great success with semi-stand development with dilute Pyrocat ala Steve Sherman. I shot one scene on a bright overcast day using FP-4+ where the shadows required 90 seconds @ f/32. The bright areas need to be burned in a bit, but other than that it is a very easy negative to print with detail everywhere.

Richard Wasserman

brian steinberger · Sep 16, 2009

c6h6o3 said:
Wait. I found the picture I referred to on his website. It's the one in the middle, From the 2nd Floor Cell Block. And man, it is dark in that place. Be sure to enable popups in your browser, so that you can see it enlarged.

This is exactly what I'm going after. I may have to give Pyrocat HD another look, this time with semi-stand. Maybe Sandy will re-chime in here with more info about semi-stand with Pyrocat HD.

I may also give Rodinal semi-stand another try as well, this time at 1:200 dilution per Shawn. one question Shawn, is there a minimum recommended amount of concentrate per roll? I believe I read 3 or 4 ml.

Shawn Dougherty · Sep 16, 2009

brian steinberger said:
This is exactly what I'm going after. I may have to give Pyrocat HD another look, this time with semi-stand. Maybe Sandy will re-chime in here with more info about semi-stand with Pyrocat HD.

I may also give Rodinal semi-stand another try as well, this time at 1:200 dilution per Shawn. one question Shawn, is there a minimum recommended amount of concentrate per roll? I believe I read 3 or 4 ml.

There is but I've used as little as 2.5ml per roll and been fine...

The way I do it is to use a tank that holds two reels of whatever but only develop one roll.

brian steinberger · Sep 16, 2009

Thanks Shawn. I'll give this a try this weekend hopefully. And your example photo in the snow was excellent.

Shawn Dougherty · Sep 16, 2009

brian steinberger said:
Thanks Shawn. I'll give this a try this weekend hopefully. And your example photo in the snow was excellent.

Good luck, and I can't stress enough you'll need to place whatever shadows you would like detail in on about zone v. And thanks! Shawn

P.S. I have plenty of sodium sulphite and I just borrowed some phenidone so I'm going to give this POTA thing a try with TMY-2 in 120. I'll let you know how it goes.

dancqu · Sep 16, 2009

brian steinberger said:
So I've recently begun reading about two-bath and water-bath
development. Seems water-bath development is obsolete and
insufficient with todays modern emulsions. But the two-bath
development seems to sounds intriguing.

The tricky part about taming contrast is maintaining reasonable
film speed. Most posts this thread promote methods which rely
on localized developer depletion.

By contrast the quick way to control highlight density is by pull
processing though by that method ISO may be much reduced.

Water bath and two bath are very much depletion methods.
Were I using either I would multiple pass. That is A to B then
back to A then B, and so on. By either method a very dilute
developer used one shot; the B bath for two bath, ditto.

As it is I've had good results using D-23 at a 1:7 dilution
with extended development times. Do Home Brew?
D-23, metol + sodium sulfite. Dan

sanking · Sep 16, 2009

brian steinberger said:
This is exactly what I'm going after. I may have to give Pyrocat HD another look, this time with semi-stand. Maybe Sandy will re-chime in here with more info about semi-stand with Pyrocat HD.

I have personally done a lot of photography of scenes of very high contrast. With proper technique capturing up to 18-19 stops is possisble without loss of shadow detail.

One method that does not work well is simply curtailing development with normal developers of regular dilutions. This will result in loss of effective film speed.

My two favorite methods for capturing scenes of great contrast are, 1) use of very dilute solutions with minimal agitation and long development times, and 2) use of two-bath development. The advantage of the first method is that you have complete control of average gradient as the film will continue to develop contrast the longer it stays in the solution. The advantage of two bath development is that the negative will develop to a certain contrast, but no more. Both methods give full film speed.

Most of my work in the past was done with dilute Pyrocat-HD solutions (1.5:1:200) and minimal agitation, following more or less the same procedures used by Steve Sherman. I always did BTZS testing with this method and developed to a precise average gradient for my process, which was about a DR of log 1.8.

Nowdays I am photographing high contrast scenes simply exposing for the shadows and developing with two-bath solutions. I have used both divided D23 and divided Pyrocat-HD. With this method I don't need a precise contrast because the negatives will be scanned, not printed directly.

Sandy King

brian steinberger · Sep 16, 2009

Thanks for the info Dan. I'm actually going to purchase some metol (I already have sodium sulfite) and sodium metaborate for bath B and try the two bath. Any tips for starting times? You mention pulling film... either placing your shadows on zone IV or V or rating your film speed a stop or two slower would essentially be doing the same thing. I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. Elaborate? Thanks.

Shawn, interested to hear your results with POTA.

brian steinberger · Sep 16, 2009

sanking said:
brian steinberger said:

This is exactly what I'm going after. I may have to give Pyrocat HD another look, this time with semi-stand. Maybe Sandy will re-chime in here with more info about semi-stand with Pyrocat HD.

I have personally done a lot of photography of scenes of very high contrast. With proper technique capturing up to 18-19 stops is possisble without loss of shadow detail.

One method that does not work well is simply curtailing development with normal developers of regular dilutions. This will result in loss of effective film speed.

My two favorite methods for capturing scenes of great contrast are, 1) use of very dilute solutions with minimal agitation and long development times, and 2) use of two-bath development. The advantage of the first method is that you have complete control of average gradient as the film will continue to develop contrast the longer it stays in the solution. The advantage of two bath development is that the negative will develop to a certain contrast, but no more. Both methods give full film speed.

Most of my work in the past was done with dilute Pyrocat-HD solutions (1.5:1:200) and minimal agitation, following more or less the same procedures used by Steve Sherman. I always did BTZS testing with this method and developed to a precise average gradient for my process, which was about a DR of log 1.8.

Nowdays I am photographing high contrast scenes simply exposing for the shadows and developing with two-bath solutions. I have used both divided D23 and divided Pyrocat-HD. With this method I don't need a precise contrast because the negatives will be scanned, not printed directly.

Sandy King

Click to expand...

Sandy, thanks so much. With your two bath work, what equivalent of contraction (N-2, N-3) are you finding? Also, what are your times in each bath? Are you letting the film sit un-agitated for the second bath? I'm very interested in the two bath process. Thanks again.

Best development method for high contrast scenes?

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