Help shooting low-contrast scenes

[Max Power]

Hey all,
I'm looking for a bit of advice. Last week I went out and shot a couple of rolls of FP4+ at the Montmorency Falls. It was a grey overcast day, and there was lots of snow everywhere. Long story short, the sky was grey, the snow was grey, the falls were grey. In other words, nothing 'snapped' in terms of contrast. The negatives I got are technically great, they just lack punch. I know how to deal with them at the print stage, but what I'm wondering, is, how can I crank up the contrast, in a low contrast scene, at the stage of exposing the film?

Thanks,
Kent

 

[jd callow]

Underexpose and over develope, would be the classic way of doing it. Others who are far brighter than I will or can give you specifics.

My meager experience would lead me to start with a tmax film at half again of it's box speed and I'd add ~ 20% to normal development times.

 

[Neal]

Dear Kent,

The short answer is push the film a stop. The longer you develop, the higher the contrast (within limits, of course). Looking at the FP4+ data sheet, Ilford gives times for EI200. This is probably a good place to start.

Having said that, everything is a tradeoff. With the snow, assuming you want some texture there, you may have a pretty normal brightness range (I'm sure I'm using "brightness range" incorrectly but it describes it well enough for me) from highlights to shadows. With you present negative, you can still print with a harder setting, get your highlights right, and dodge in your shadows. The more you push, the more shadow detail you will lose. 200 would be pretty save though.

Neal Wydra

 

[rbarker]

The under-expose/over-develop method will increase (compress) the contrast in the negatives, while keeping overall density about "normal". The ideal being to under-expose and over-develop by corresponding amounts. What amounts to a "stop" of over-development will vary by film/developer combination and individual technique, so some pre-testing helps.

The problem, however, is that this approach also compresses the tonal range. In truth, the negs lack punch because the scene lacked punch. So, while negative contrast can be "improved", doing so may not actually "improve" the resulting images. From an artistic perspective, you might actually be better off accentuating the low contrast of the scene.

 

[MurrayMinchin]

From an artistic perspective, you might actually be better off accentuating the low contrast of the scene.

That's a really good point. I used to have a big problem with preconceiving what kind of images I wanted to make the next day or in a new area, only to have nature give me something totally different. If I wanted full sun, it would rain. If I wanted the nights snow to stick, it would fall off the trees the next morning. The point is, that photographing in nature runs about 50-50 between what I want and what nature actually offers up...sometimes I want to shout drama, but the scene is whispering subtleties. My great lesson in photography has been to trying know when I should lean one way, or the other.

Anyways...that's a non-technical way of looking at it

Murray

 

[fhovie]

I just got done shooting a bunch of sheets at Big Sur CA along the coast. It was very foggy and contrast was all less than 5 stops SBR - sometimes more like 3. The view looked flat to me and I expect that using the FP4 I shot and semi-stand processing it for 30 minutes in pyrocat will give me N+2 and a density range of 1.3. The new ASA is 135. I shot the film at ASA100. I usually shoot it at ASA80 for pyrocat development.

Increasing contrast by pushing is often not as simple as it appears. Film speed doesn't actually go up. Instead, shadows fall off and highlights are bumped up in density causing an overall increase in contrast. If I was to have doubled the film speed and doubled doubled the development time, I would also get about N+2 contrast but I would have lost all the details I expect to get from the rocks and shadows I shot. In general - when bumping the contrast, only increase the film speed a half a stop or so. Using a compensating push will help keep your highlights withing your target density range. Semi-stand methods work very well for enlarged negatives out to 30 or 40 minutes. Past that, the accutance becomes annoying.

The photographs I will get out of this trip will look far better than the actual scenes I shot.