Film Developing Cookbook - Does one really need to overexpose T-grain film by 1-2 stops and pull process to get satisfactory results?

ame01999 said:

Throughout the latest Film Developing Cookbook, and especially in the front chapters when the authors recommend film for portraiture/landscape/street photography/etc., modern t-grain films are criticized again and again. Despite the fact that the authors rank definition and minimal granularity over smooth gradation as the prime goals when shooting 35mm (which t-grain films would seem to excel at), they essentially make t-grain films out to be entirely unsatisfactory except when overexposed by 1 to 2 stops (that's an EI of 25 for TMAX 100!) and pull processed.

This seems to be a separate issue than their warnings about the possibility of overly sharp highlights (a consequence of the films' high micro contrast) and sensitivity to changes in development times (which was more a thing with the 1st generation, apparently).

If you get fine results from TMAX or Delta without massive overexposure and underdevelopment, do you understand what the Cookbook's logic might be? The implication seems to be t-grain films are incapable of capturing shadow detail at the box speeds. When I took a Zone System class years back, and we all had access to a densitometer, we found the opposite to be true: conventional, fast films like HP5 were better exposed at 250 than 400 if you wanted Zone II to look any denser than Zone 1; whereas TMAX 100 got shadow detail just fine at EI 100 in ordinary D-76.

Crawley, who developed the FX 37 developer for t-grain films (and of course many more), incidentally recommended that the rule for minimum granularity and maximum sharpness with conventional films—expose and develop for a thin a negative as you can get away with, even if shadows are tricky to print—no longer holds with t-grains, which he think benefit from increased exposure. However, it's never explained quite how much increased exposure Crawley was recommending.

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ame01999 said:

Throughout the latest Film Developing Cookbook, and especially in the front chapters when the authors recommend film for portraiture/landscape/street photography/etc., modern t-grain films are criticized again and again. Despite the fact that the authors rank definition and minimal granularity over smooth gradation as the prime goals when shooting 35mm (which t-grain films would seem to excel at), they essentially make t-grain films out to be entirely unsatisfactory except when overexposed by 1 to 2 stops (that's an EI of 25 for TMAX 100!) and pull processed.

This seems to be a separate issue than their warnings about the possibility of overly sharp highlights (a consequence of the films' high micro contrast) and sensitivity to changes in development times (which was more a thing with the 1st generation, apparently).

If you get fine results from TMAX or Delta without massive overexposure and underdevelopment, do you understand what the Cookbook's logic might be? The implication seems to be t-grain films are incapable of capturing shadow detail at the box speeds. When I took a Zone System class years back, and we all had access to a densitometer, we found the opposite to be true: conventional, fast films like HP5 were better exposed at 250 than 400 if you wanted Zone II to look any denser than Zone 1; whereas TMAX 100 got shadow detail just fine at EI 100 in ordinary D-76.

Crawley, who developed the FX 37 developer for t-grain films (and of course many more), incidentally recommended that the rule for minimum granularity and maximum sharpness with conventional films—expose and develop for a thin a negative as you can get away with, even if shadows are tricky to print—no longer holds with t-grains, which he think benefit from increased exposure. However, it's never explained quite how much increased exposure Crawley was recommending.

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Milpool said:

A lot of bad/oversimplified/misleading information and some ancient mythology for good measure. Dispense with the cookbooks.

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ame01999 said:

Throughout the latest Film Developing Cookbook, and especially in the front chapters when the authors recommend film for portraiture/landscape/street photography/etc., modern t-grain films are criticized again and again. Despite the fact that the authors rank definition and minimal granularity over smooth gradation as the prime goals when shooting 35mm (which t-grain films would seem to excel at), they essentially make t-grain films out to be entirely unsatisfactory except when overexposed by 1 to 2 stops (that's an EI of 25 for TMAX 100!) and pull processed.

This seems to be a separate issue than their warnings about the possibility of overly sharp highlights (a consequence of the films' high micro contrast) and sensitivity to changes in development times (which was more a thing with the 1st generation, apparently).

If you get fine results from TMAX or Delta without massive overexposure and underdevelopment, do you understand what the Cookbook's logic might be? The implication seems to be t-grain films are incapable of capturing shadow detail at the box speeds. When I took a Zone System class years back, and we all had access to a densitometer, we found the opposite to be true: conventional, fast films like HP5 were better exposed at 250 than 400 if you wanted Zone II to look any denser than Zone 1; whereas TMAX 100 got shadow detail just fine at EI 100 in ordinary D-76.

Crawley, who developed the FX 37 developer for t-grain films (and of course many more), incidentally recommended that the rule for minimum granularity and maximum sharpness with conventional films—expose and develop for a thin a negative as you can get away with, even if shadows are tricky to print—no longer holds with t-grains, which he think benefit from increased exposure. However, it's never explained quite how much increased exposure Crawley was recommending.

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ic-racer said:

Speed rating cannot be separated from metering technique. One can't know how much exposure the film received without knowing both.

"I get good results when I place my highlights on Zone VI and rate the film at Box speed divided by 3 ...." etc, etc, ...

"I use a 1932 Moskova Simplex [with it's untested slow shutter] and rate my film at Box Speed times 2 ..." etc..

"With my Famous Brand Super Precision Meter [which unknowingly only works with mercury cells] I rate all my film at Box Speed minus one stop..." etc.

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chuckroast said:

This is exactly on point. The whole point of Zone System Personal EI is to take into account your way of metering, exposing, agitating, your meter's calibration, your thermometer, your shutter, your... entire workflow.

I've done densiometric testing on dozens of films using my workflow and equipment and found that - with conventional development (i.e., not semistand or EMA) - I get about 1/2 box speed pretty consistently. But that is based on the Zone system definition that Zone I should show up as 0.1 DU above FB+F.

And there's the rub. Just because you hit this magical exposure doesn't speak to the overall film curve, how you visualize shadows, or what kind of midtone separation and microcontrast you want. All of these things will affect your development discipline and in one degree or another affect the effective EI.

So, these days, I just start with 1/2 box speed and 20% less than recommended development and then just "tune by eye" when working with a new film. In truth, I more and more find myself using Extreme Minimum Agitation (EMA) methods because I like the effect this has on edge transitions and mid tone contrast. This has the happy effect of delivery an EI that is near- or at box speed pretty consistently.

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Milpool said:

I think the impression many people have is that the standard Zone System personal EI test adjusts the ISO speed to account for all of those variables you listed, but it doesn’t really do that. The only thing that can do that is experience with consistently under or overexposed negatives.

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Milpool said:

Barring extreme processing or especially poorly formulated developers, the reason Zone System personal EIs come out 1/2 to 1 stop lower than the ISO speed is because the Zone System speed point (the exposure where you are targeting 0.1 above base+fog) is 2/3 stop below where it is in the ISO criteria. That’s really all there is to it. And that difference can roughly be equated with the 1 stop safety factor which was removed from the ISO speed standard in 1960.

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chuckroast said:

I'm not sure why you think this. If I do the requisite testing with my own tools and workflow, I will get results specific to my context. So yeah, if I have variability in my meter or thermometer, it's going to build that into my resulting effective EI.

Whether or not this EI is meaningful or not is another kettle of fish for the reasons noted previously. EI alone cannot speak to much beyond shadow detail and then only for some definition of "detail". Obviously, there is way more to making expressive images than just shadows and how I place them.

But let's remember the original context for Zone System. Adams (and White) were trying to bring repeatability and rigor to exposure management that previously had been kind of like voodoo. They were not trying to bring lab precision to the whole business. Part of that was accounting for equipment and measurement variability and expressing it as a corrected personal EI.

The later almost cult-like following that emerged was kind of beyond the original intent in many ways. How many images have we seen with a 14 stop SBR properly Zone Systemed onto a sheet of paper that is utterly boring and dull. As an example, one of my pet peeves is the sacrificing of midtone microcontrast that takes place when people blindly do N- processing to hold the dynamic range per ZS. I know this because I did it for years. I look at those images and wince.




Just a fine point. The one stop safety factor wasn't just "removed" if I recall correctly. What happened was that the gradient method of speed calculation was introduced which redefined what "minimum exposure to make an image" really meant. I have the paper somewhere around here that explains all this but I haven't looked at it in a while, but the effect was to declare films a stop faster than they had been historically.

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Milpool said:

No, the 1960 change was the safety factor. See Nelson - Safety Factors in Camera Exposures.

You might be thinking of the “first excellent print” speeds (print judgement speeds) which led to the fractional gradient which led to Delta-X, which is baked into the ISO standard. But the doubling of speeds in 1960 was the safety factor.

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runswithsizzers said:

@Alan Johnson, I think my copy of the Film Developing Cookbook is the first edition (c1998). On page 15, there is a sidebar which states,
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"It is our opinion that tabular grain films are inferior to conventional grain films. [...] Should you use these films , we suggest you try overexposing by up to two stops and developing for 20-30% less time."
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chuckroast said:

Ah, ok, that makes sense.

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MTGseattle said:

I was hesitant to jump in on this, but after reading quite a few threads that touch on the same thing (metering technique), I'm going to ask.

When we say something like "...Your personal metering technique." What are we asking? I understand that if you a meter a scene with an slr, and I meter a scene with a pentax digital spot meter, there may be some variance. An incident meter or spot meter only work properly in one way. If we both meter a scene (the same scene for arguments sake) with the same meter that is calibrated properly, what would the variables be?
Each person's opinion regarding the important parts of the scene (shadow placement and/or highlights) are the only things I can come up with. I see "metering technique" come up a lot and am simply curious.

I feel like what we all do with what the meter tells us is where either the magic or folly occurs.

as to t-grain films, I don't consider myself a fine enough printer to know whether Tmax or Delta films have prevented me from attaining the sublime. I'm pretty happy with negatives I have from both films and lately I just try and think more about what the EI will mean regarding my exposure times in the field.

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