Does pushing and pulling apply to paper too?

This is something I've been wondering for a while now.

Say, for example, you expose one print for 10 seconds and develop it for 2 minutes.
You expose another print for 20 seconds and develop it for 1 minute. (Same temperature, developer, paper, and enlarger for both prints of course.)

Are the two prints going to look identical? Or are they going to have different characteristics such as tone, grain, detail?

While pushing and pulling prints has long been used to fine tune photos, the drastic adjustment you cite should result in different characteristics. Reducing development below a certain minimum will lose rich blacks in shadow areas. Detail (except perhaps in highlights and shadows) and grain shouldn't be drastically changed.

Under developing prints certainly lowers contrast. For example, it is very tempting to pull over exposed prints when you see them starting to look too dark under the safe light, but the result is usually a muddy looking picture. The normal 60 sec dev time for RC papers is supposed to be full development, but I always leave them for 2 minutes. I find I get a little extra sparkle from a slight contrast increase and more subtle tonal development. The difference is marginal, but I consider it worth the extra time involved.

David.

hammy said:

This is something I've been wondering for a while now.
...different characteristics such as tone, grain, detail?

Click to expand...

Curves generated by Phil Davis when testing three Forte
papers indicate that pushing will increase contrast. Pushing
I say because Maximum Black was reached with a 45 second
development and although the blacks were no more dense a
longer development time increased contrast. More than
1:30 did little to increase contrast. Dan

Hammy,

I "push" and "pull" prints all the time and it absolutely works if you're using a paper and developer that can respond to this approach. In my case, that's Amidol which is a very active developer and Kentona which (for whatever reason) really responds well to water bath and other controls. I just made a print this weekend that needed to be softer. A water bath helped but I needed it even softer so I flashed the paper and reduced my development time (usually 1-1/2 minutes) to 50 seconds and let it sit a full minute in the water bath. It made a tremendous difference in the contrast. Still got deep blacks, just took the edge off a bit and brought detail into the highlights. The only other difference in the print that I notice from using this approach is color. The longer water bath makes the paper noticably warmer in this case.

My experience is that "pushing" is more limited than "pulling". I have successfully lowered contrast significantly on prints by overexposing and more or less stand developing them. It works quite well under the right circumstances.

patrick