I need a over exposing and under developing guide

pentaxuser said:

If he had shot it at f4 and used normal development as he demonstrated in one of his negs, the outdoors are featureless. How much lower a grade of print would be required to have restored detail outside while avoiding a flat greyness in the final print?

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It doesn't matter whether you pull by one stop or print a grade lower contrast, the result should be the same AFAIK. The latter method requires less overexposure.

Thanks,certainly your method avoids the problem of different development times for different frames which cannot be solved with roll film. It was just, if I am being honest, I have doubts about whether a lower grade contrast print to cope with the kind of light conditions in the scene would result in as good a print as the Prof's method. If it does then the Prof's method has little or nothing going for it. Certainly in the video and to be fair to him he wasn't saying his way was the only way but that it avoided a lot of dodging that would be required to bring detail in the outdoor part of the picture. Dodging isn't necessarily an issue in every print but can be quite intricate in other prints.

Really it was a pity that he hadn't given an example of the F4 neg with normal development and a lower grade of VC paper as a compare and contrast method.

pentaxuser

faberryman said:

Sounds like it was correctly exposed for the indoors at f4 and given something like N-2 development to control the highlights. This is standard Zone System stuff for sheet film. For 35 and 120, do you want to do that as a general rule for every shot on every roll?

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Sorry I hadn't noticed your reply when I replied to Rudeofus and yet it should have been there before I replied according to the times. I wonder if I had started my reply before your reply, then broke for lunch and then completed my reply later and in the meantime your reply had appeared unnoticed by me. You are right about standard stuff for sheet film and it may be that this is the Prof's usual film. I viewed his video again and he doesn't mention the problems that arise with roll film with over exposure and under development which was a pity but it may be that he expects you to infer that with roll film and in situations where the scene's differences in light is great and affects a lot of the frames taken then he believes that on balance the overexpose and under-develop method is the easier of the two routes to take as opposed to either dodging and burning for detail and normal development. Setting the EI two stops below box speed for the whole roll and 50%, say, under-development might make sense. In the scene in question f4 doesn't appear to create DoF problems but it could in other scenes. Bounce flash for his father's details and the correct aperture for the outside light, followed by normal development spring to mind as another route in the scene in question.

pentaxuser

With push/pull development and/or different paper grades we can influence global contrast but not local contrast. If your scene contains a person in the shade and a brightly lit window, you end up with six options:

1. Let the person disappear into a blob of black, but highlight contrast looks good.
   
2. Let the window blow out into a blob of white, but the person in the shade will have good contrast.
   
3. Create a low contrast image which has good detail in all regions but decent contrast in neither.
4. Develop to normal contrast, then use dodge&burn to bring detail into shadow/highlight regions
5. Use flash/extra lights/reflectors/daytime to provide more uniform lighting across the scene
   
6. Create a low contrast source image which holds detail in all regions, then use digital post processing to increase local contrast.

Many people are now used to these digital "artistic" landscape images, where every tiny section of the image covers the whole tonal range, and where the image viewed from a distance looks uniformly gray. These images are not created by option 3, but by option 6, which is not available to analog shooters. The "Prof's method" is a limited variation of option 3, one which loses extra film speed, too.

With dodging&burning we can print at higher contrast and still preserve shadow&highlight regions, if they are confined to well bounded areas. Honestly, if dodging&burning or other darkroom trickery is such a pain to be avoided at all cost, then don't shoot randomly lit scenes, or include digital post processing in your work flow.

Thanks Rudeofus for your summary.

pentaxuser

faberryman said:

Sounds like it was correctly exposed for the indoors at f4 and given something like N-2 development to control the highlights. This is standard Zone System stuff for sheet film. For 35 and 120, do you want to do that as a general rule for every shot on every roll?

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You could always carry a 2nd camera for 50% development shots. Say a clamshell 35mm or a 645 folder.

In the real world, I think that most of us doing that would still have plenty of shots left in the 2nd camera after a year.