HP5 Overexpose / Underdevelop Question

[Lachlan Young]

but you can indeed address blown out highlights with reduced development.

No such thing as 'blown out' highlights - they're almost always printable, given time and various techniques - unless it's a misused document/ litho film... Main problem is dealing with muddy highlights from overexposure shoving them up into the shoulder on film/ dev combinations that tend towards shouldering/ shouldering early.

If you aren't necessarily dealing with a situation in which you need to reduce contrast, but have overexposed your film a stop, normal processing will be just fine, possibly with a small visual granularity penalty.

The problem with reducing processing is that it reduces overall contrast by flattening the overall gradient - and it may produce a neg that's too flat to produce good midtone gradation without potentially complicated print manipulation elsewhere. There's nothing wrong with preferring the tonality of the -15% or thereabouts negs - but it's not necessarily the right way to deal with overexposure.

 

[Craig75]

I’m still not clear on rationale for option 2. Why attempt to “compensate” for increased exposure by reducing contrast?

thats what ilford recommend themselves with some of their developers; they give different times for ilfosol at 200 400 and 800

you've increased contrast in shadows and midtones by overexposing so as a consequence the film can spend less time in the developer. you just get less grain and a slightly different look. I used to shoot hp5+ at 100 and develop for 5 mins in microphen - looked nice.

I see it said a few times on here - why reduce development with increased exposure - you dont have to at all - but Ilford do give shorter times for overexposed film - and it works. As does developing it at box speed. Either gets the job done

 

[DH_Studio]

My time is 9:00. 20°C. Same as Xtol 1+1.

They came out pretty good. No problems that I can see (apart from the dust from the scan). Thanks for the advice.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

They came out pretty good. No problems that I can see (apart from the dust from the scan). Thanks for the advice.

View attachment 264263 View attachment 264264

They look great!

 

[138S]

With negative film, there are essentially three ways in which highlight detail is lost (although they can be interrelated). (1) They are exposed beyond the exposure scale of the film, (2) They are beyond the film’s maximum density, (3) They are within both the exposure scale and density scale, but have no contrast (ie no detail).

Well, yes... it has to be admited that HP5+ (and usually all high speed film) has impressive highlight latitude, as we expose 400 speed two stops less than 100 speed then the minuscle crystals (that are there in both cases) usually provide 2 stops more latitude in the 400 case...

Other films (Foma 100, for example) has the shoulder way closer to the nominal exposure, to not mention CMS 20...

Of course we can totally abuse films like TMY or TMX... with extreme highlight llinearity and latitude...

Still we should consider how exposure will end in drawbacks when printing (in the darkroom), the higher density ends in longer exposure times, and very dense areas fall more in LIRF. Of course this is not a concern is scanning.

A not contrasty scene allows a lot of overexposure (specially with high speed film), here we have an example with TX:

http://canadianfilmlab.com/2016/04/03/black-white-film-exposure-test-comparisons-kodak-tri-x-400/

While we get an image a +3 overexposure will deliver a different grain (developments in that test?):

Nominal vs +3 , enlarge to see the grain !!!



IMO film crystal formulation has been adjusted to deliver it's "most" wanted signature around Nominal exposure, IMO, but at the end it's about taste.

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IMO, of course one stop overexposure in HP5+ can be developed nominally...

But reducing contrast with a shorter development after overexposing may also be a sound strategy, at the end is what we (or many) routinely do in LF, or what it was instructed by ZS... anyway today we have different materials allowing other interpretations of the ZS recipes.

Will a lower negative contrast harm ? We get the same print because we compensate the lower contrast with higher paper contrast grade, say we go from grade 2 to grade 3, and then we have an aditional contrast grade difference to burn with 00 the highlights, we had a 2 to 00 difference and know we have 3 to 00. So to burn highlights we have two powerful toos: less LIRF and a higher highlight compressión when burning. Still if we fairly overexpose film highlights then we may compress them more in the negative shoulder, a pulled development will displace the shoulder to the right so will drop the highlight compression we may desire.

A well known "portraiture guru level" hack was shooting TXP 320 at EI 80 (!) and later pulling development to 5min (HC-110, ? Dil. B)...

IMO nailing the tonality we want, shadow detail, grain depiction and glare texture is a complex art I don't totally understand, but no doubt film/processing/paper are very flexible tools allowing a true master many ways to craft impressive works. I feel there is not a single way... but the more we understand the medium nature the more open doors we have.