Developing roll that has a mix of pushed and normal shots

Due to several unavoidable circumstances, I have a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 that has shots 1-17 normal, 18-30 pushed 2 stops to 1600, and 30-36 normal. Now I have the quagmire of developing this roll.


My initial plan is was to separate each section into different parts by measurement. I know the length at which the last shot is (simply by measuring the distance between the last shot of a developed roll and the taped part of the reel. from there I can figure out where to cut. However, this is quite a risky idea, and I would most likely cut into at least one negative.

The other idea is to process the whole roll at +1 stop. The problem with this is that as Ultramax is a cheap consumer film, I don't know how that's going to fair compared to something like Portra.


Suggestions? The shots on these rolls have sentimental value.

I would go for push +2 dev time.
In my book overdeveloped negs are salvageable, underdeveloped ones are not.

I assume both +0 and +2 shots are of equal value or +2 shots > +0.

I would go with plus one.

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For clarity.

"Pushing" refers only to a change in development. What you have is a roll where some of the frames have been exposed normally, while others have been under-exposed by as much as two stops.

If you push the development, you:
1) increase the contrast of those parts of the image that actually registered on the film; and
2) make the highlights more dense (and potentially too dense); but
3) you do almost nothing to retrieve the shadows that you lost detail in due to the under-exposure.

The answer to your question depends at least partially on the scenes you under-exposed when they were photographed. If they were full of dark shadows that you wanted to maintain detail in, there is basically nothing you can do. If, however, there were lots of important mid-tones and highlights in those scenes, and you can afford to lose the details in the shadows, then a push development may help.

Make your choice between a one or two stop push depending on how contrasty the lighting was, and how important detail in the highlights is to you - in both the properly exposed and under exposed portions. The more important and contrasty the highlights, the more important it is to minimize the push.

One additional consideration on what Matt has said, push developing will throw off the color balance some. You may want to consider which shots you'd prefer to have the best color rendition. If you process normally, you'll have a sequence that is two stops under exposed (you do anyway), so thin negs for those, but probably printable via scan/print methodologies.

You could shoot a couple of test rolls with a similar mix of exposures, have them processed according to whatever push/no-push scheme you want to try, and see what the results are like before you risk the important roll.

As Matt suggested, you simply have normal exposures mixed up with under exposures on the same roll.

With regard to exposure on color negative film, I am personally comfortable shooting from 1-stop under to 3-stops over on the same roll. Regardless of how I've exposed I always now develop normally.

2-stops under is doable for me when I'm willing to give away a significant amount of shadow detail in the print. Nothing you or I can do will get back that lost shadow detail at this point, nothing.

+1 push development might help make your underexposed negatives a bit easier to work with and probably won't hurt the normally exposed negatives very much.

If it were me, and the original roll was truly important, I would shoot a new roll of the same film in a similar situations to your high value roll but I would vary the exposures in three series then cut the roll in thirds and develop normal, +1, and +2 respectively.

Thank you for the advice everyone. I've done some research and thought about what is on the photos, and I think I'll go with a +1 push development.