How many development times do you use for a film? Would just two work fine for your own system?

Lachlan Young said:

Exactly - it's also a bit like the way that indexing the darkest detail retaining shadows to IRE 1 on a spotmeter puts them within rather less than 1/3 stop variance with what the BTZS incident metering technique delivers - and that people apparently spend the most ridiculously pointless amount of time worrying about metering techniques to the exclusion of what matters - the image!




Not necessarily - I've found that aiming for a harder paper grade (ie not building as much highlight density through expansion) seems to deliver better sharpness and gradation.

It's nothing to do with the grain structure & all to do with the designed curve shape with a softer toe & later/ less shouldering.

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Hi, Lachlan, pity you took this personally!
Trying to make me look wrong Is so silly!
But saying grain in HP5+, such unique grain design film, has no relevance to its film design, is just a dirty lie from you to present and future readers...
HP5+ couldn't have any other type of grain to behave the ways it behaves, and a curve shape desing is totally dependant on grain's behaviour... You can't desing a film, and then, put any type of grain inside as an ice cream flavor...
But please don't stop posting here again: people around the world admire your great posting and your outstanding photography.
Wishing good light for you,
Juan Valdenebro

When it comes to roll films I could see developing my characteristic curves if I was REALLY into one film and dev combo. However with sheet film I am NOT going through all that expensive film on each one of my lenses.

Juan Valdenebro said:

Am I the only one thinking VC printing alone, is inferior to VC printing + a negative with some contraction or expansion?

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You're not alone. Doing the best you can do with every step in the process makes sense to me regardless of whether VC paper can solve downstream problems. In my case I generally shoot outdoors with roll film so I can't make development decisions on a per-image basis, but I do make sure that entire rolls of film are exposed in similar contrast conditions so I can make appropriate development adjustments.

Juan Valdenebro said:

HP5+ couldn't have any other type of grain to behave the ways it behaves, and a curve shape desing is totally dependant on grain's behaviour...

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This is inaccurate - if you read Ron's posts on system engineering you'll find that curve shape is quite readily manipulable with modern (post-WW2) design approaches to emulsion growth, blending, layer structure, sensitisation. If it wasn't you couldn't get the diversity of emulsions in the market. We associate a particular type of granularity with HP5+, but the curve and sensitisation characteristics could be replicated on a variety of crystal growth structures - the tone scale, colour sensitivity could be the same, but the character of the granularity perceived might be different.

Juan Valdenebro said:

You can't desing a film, and then, put any type of grain inside as an ice cream flavor...

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Err, yes you can. It's happened more often than you'll have noticed - often to get the emulsion to stay tighter to spec than older less controlled emulsion growth techniques.

NortheastPhotographic said:

When it comes to roll films I could see developing my characteristic curves if I was REALLY into one film and dev combo. However with sheet film I am NOT going through all that expensive film on each one of my lenses.

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It's mainly useful from a process control standpoint to see where your setup deviates from the published specs in terms of time/ contrast. The BTZS test Bill outlined above uses the grand total of 5 sheets of film.

Juan Valdenebro said:

Hi, instead of 5 precise times for, say, N-2 to N+2, couldn't just a couple of times and ISOs, for sun and for a middle luminance overcast, do it well enough? I mean, that's much closer to the real thing than box speed and same development for 36 different contrast scenes, and even that works to some degree...
With a bit of shame, and though I really keep enjoying, I must confess just like when I was a teenager, and now I'm 48, yet I'm testing, trying different things/systems while my hair becomes whiter and whiter... Perhaps some nice opinions here could help me tune my system during the remaining of this lifetime...

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I generally have 2 times, though, this should be couched with the fact that I process a lot of film for other people. My standard time is for ISO contrast (0.615, I round up to 0.62). My second time is for zone system contrast (~0.60).

now the why’s: most people that send me film tend to treat it like digital when exposing it and therefor under expose it, so in order to get as much usable shadow detail as possible without totally getting overly grainy, I process it to ISO contrast. A simple way to get there is to expose an 18 percent grey card correctly, then process it so that it’s density is 0.85 (plus or minus a few 0.01) above film base plus fog. If your film is really box speed, an 18 percent grey card with 4 stops less exposure should net a density of 0.1 above film base plus fog.

for zone system contrast, a correctly exposed grey card should net a density of 0.70 to 0.75 above film base plus fog. I use this development time for negatives where I know there was enough exposure given. This allows me to reign in the grain a little bit at a minor cost in effective film speed.