HP5+/Rodinal -- Bad soup, Bad exposure, or ???

I realize my darkroom technique is rusty, but I though things had gone smoothly. HP5+/Rodinal 1:25, 6 minutes at 20°C. Clearly I blew out the grass, yet the shadow detail seems sold.

Any guesses what happened here? While I guess I should have used a yellow filter, is this the result of simple overexposure, a bad soup, or did I simply run out of dynamic range? Thanks in advance!

You cannot fix lighting with film development.

How did you arrive at the attached image? Scanning the negative? It tells me nothing.

Rodinal and HP5 is a lovely combo; I use 1:50 at about 11 minutes or so, and print on MGIV RC.

Yes, it's a scan. I've used this combination before and I've come to expect more dynamic range than I got on this particular roll. I'm not looking for the developer to fix my mistakes; only to figure out what mistake I made.

Looks printed way too light. That said, harsh sun is ugly no matter hat film or developer you use.

What I've found with Rodinal, I lose one full stop of speed with the developer. That being said, your photo appears to be scanned too light(printed too light) I never scan negatives, so I couldn't tell you how to remedy the final outcome.

I can see nothing wrong with the developer/film combination per se, based on this scan of the negative but frankly you need to look at the negative and see if there is any detail in the highlights/ shadows area. My guess is there will be and it is then a question of printing to bring out such details.

You might not have a negative that will print as a straight print without dodging and burning but you won't know until you do a print or have a print made for you.

If you can't have a straight print made to scan then try scanning the negative as faithfully as possible and let us look at that.

pentaxuser

benveniste said:

Any guesses what happened here? While I guess I should have used a yellow filter, is this the result of simple overexposure, a bad soup, or did I simply run out of dynamic range? Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

apparently the neg was scanned in a Noritsu minilab [you may want to provide that info yourself rather than have us look up your EXIF data], so we can assume it was given the standard auto-exposure treatment. Unless you print (or at least scan) it yourself, you won't be able to tell how bad the ›problem‹ is. To me it looks like you'll be able to get an okay-ish (analog) print from that neg. It's got more than enough shadow detail, and is likely contain more highlight detail than the scanner was able (or set) to record.

Re: Yellow Filter: I don't think that would have had a significant effect in this case -- other than deteriorating image quality.

that said, IMHO there's better choices than using the film you were using (and giving it the development you gave it) during a time of the year as sunny as this... next time, consider a slower film (FP4) and a higher dilution, and use your ›old‹ combination during cloudier times.

well, its kind of like this. . . . In order to to asses your negative, it would be nice for you if you had a densimeter. your image "problems" can be attributed to many problems, or any combination there of. my suspicion is in your development. as an example, your thermometer ? did it suffer the fate as so many of mine have? they do go bad! was/were contamination/ over concentration/ brain fart? agitating too much? For the scene( contrast range) it appears as though you should have subtracted time so your highlights do not build up so fast. poor metering/ dysfunctional light meter? sometimes a "false positive" meter reading does happen, did you set your ISO to the proper level, did it get changed accidentally? It appears in the scan, that the original scene was quite contrasty, that being said. . . . I suggest you go out and re shoot! if that image is something that you are committed to. ( p.s. I am not affirming or denying the artistic quality of the image, just trying to be an honest broker!)

Please send us the picture of the negative it self - so that we can see how dense it is. Many thing can be improved in post processing, printing, toning...

Rodial and HP5

BetterSense said:

You cannot fix lighting with film development.

How did you arrive at the attached image? Scanning the negative? It tells me nothing.

Rodinal and HP5 is a lovely combo; I use 1:50 at about 11 minutes or so, and print on MGIV RC.

Click to expand...

At what ASA are rating the film. The reason I ask is that your time and temp are very close to what I use and I'm rating the HP5 at 200 ASA

I don't rate my film at anything because I typically don't use light meters. When I use a camera with metering like my N80, I tend to set the film speed at 320 or something, but then I expose more when I think the situation requires it.