Developing badly overexposed HP5+

MattKing said:

Mark

Bad choice of words. I should have said ... [/I]

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Figured as much.

One of the biggest struggles we have here at APUG (as in the rest of our world) is that the concepts we try to express often get muddled in the language we commonly use.

I think part of the problem here is that the normal vocabulary used tries to tie specific subject placement to a specific point on the negative.

This goes back to the way the various zone systems have been taught and I think it's is also rooted in how transparencies and jpeg's are still shot. It is just easier for people to follow the logic path if there is a fixed (best) exposure target.

When we step into the nebulous world of negatives though, where there is a whole range of exposure placement choices that can and do produce very good results and where there is no "best" placement (except for one's own personal best), it gets tougher to explain.

2 stops is not terribly overexposed, but HP5+ does have a pronounced shoulder and will block highlights if overdeveloped. I would use highly dilute developer (preferably a nice, soft working one) and develop it by inspection so as to not block the highlights. Let's not overthink this.

A few years back, when P55 was still readily available, i forgot to reset my exposure meter after using the polaroid stuff at 25 iso and shot some HP5+ at this rate. After some thinking and advice here I decided to develop the negatives as i always do. The consideration was that maintaining the contrast of the negative was more important for me then tryiing to correct the exposure. Well, the negatives came out pretty dense, to say the least, and had very good shadow detai, no surprise there either. More importantly: they took a bit more effort to print, but the results were very acceptable. My advice would be to develop the negatives as you always do and you will probably be alright...

c6h6o3 said:

2 stops is not terribly overexposed, but HP5+ does have a pronounced shoulder and will block highlights if overdeveloped. I would use highly dilute developer (preferably a nice, soft working one) and develop it by inspection so as to not block the highlights. Let's not overthink this.

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What developer/development technique do you find the shoulder with? How far up is it?

Personally with normal by the book instruction in DDX or RolloPyro I find lots of room for extra exposure.