Need help using zone system with film with 19-stop dynamic range

[Maris]

I wonder if there is actually any worthwhile subject matter out there with a viewable 19 stop luminance range. Can't recall ever encountering such.

 

[wiltw]

Even if there is a subject scene with so wide a dynamic range that it calls for capture medium that can support 19-stop range, ultimately one has to keep in mind that REPRODUCING that scene on paper or projected image is always inherently limited to the dyamic range of the reproduction media! and offset print images are limited to an even narrower range than conventional photosensitive printing papers.
So it ultimately is a rather moot issue that any B&W film can capture a high DR scene when the photosensitive paper cannot recreate the scene.

 

[Sirius Glass]

The best I ever got was 14 f/stops.

 

[Lachlan Young]

I wonder if there is actually any worthwhile subject matter out there with a viewable 19 stop luminance range. Can't recall ever encountering such.

Probably not - it's just the usual dealers in hypotheticals who seem to demand opened shadows and resolved lightbulb filaments in the same image...

 

[reddesert]

It sounds like this is one of your first times shooting film, and you're shooting roll film (meaning you aren't likely to be sorting exposures into +, -, and normal development). Then it is good practice to expose for the shadow detail, develop normally, and understand that the extra 9 or whatever stops of "dynamic range" is extra credit way up there in the highlights. That is, the film doesn't have much of a shoulder that flattens out in density. You don't want to _count on_ this fact to capture your scene, because this range would be difficult to render naturally in a presentation medium, such as printed paper or viewed on a monitor.

 

[Bill Burk]

At Black Rock Desert I once took a picture of a slag burn.

Slag is what the rocket scientists gather up of duds and broken rocket engines. They build a little bonfire in a washing machine drum and toss pieces of slag in where it burns with all the intensity you can imagine of uncontained rocket engines.

Now there’s 19 stops for ya

 

[Lachlan Young]

That’s me

But I’ve never encountered 19 stops.

If anyone wishes to lock themselves in a room painted with Vantablack and ignite 6 PF330 flashbulbs simultaneously, I'd be interested to hear what the results were...

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

What you are describing are operator errors/ lack of knowledge about what the scanner's bit depth & software are doing, not necessarily inherent scanner problems. Even your average CMOS camera sensor can largely (I'd say all current sensors, but there may be exceptions) pick up the entirety of the useful dynamic range in a BW negative in a single shot without problems - it's then up to the end user how to (hopefully intelligently) invert that & make tonal corrections. You should never, ever compromise a negative for scanning. Indeed, a lot of the nonsense about the supposedly 'huge' dynamic range from scans came from people realising they could scrape a bit more from stuff in the toe/ shoulder when using decently high end scanning solutions that were comfortably able to get every last bit of resolved latitude information (note: not 'all' information - there is a difference between resolved information contained on the film, and resolution of film structure information, and this is a problem that scanning seems to have never quite managed to understand, let alone tackle really convincingly) out of a film in a linear-ish fashion that might have needed complex darkroom masking procedures to otherwise retrieve.

Here's what I found with both my Epson V600 and V850. The full range of stops in the film is captured in one scan.

It is true that the higher the dmax of the scanner, the better job it will do penetrating the film. What people don't realize is that the range of ambient light, whether in a dark scene or bright one, is condensed into a few stops of maybe 7 in negative film and 5 in chrome color. It's only the scene before you snap that may be multiples of that. But once captured, it doesn't matter any longer what the original range was.

Here a display of Tmax100 scanned with a V850 "flat" - meaning no adjustments in the Epson scan. Exposure is nominally box speed. Of course, I don't know whether that was the "right" estimate and whether the shutter was accurate. I turned on the clipping feature in Lightroom. The red rebate area is the white clipping area and the blue the black clipping. You can see the histogram shows the full range picked up in the one scan.

One thing I will say. Is if I shot at a lower ASA, the histogram should be shifted to the right. Wouldn't that have gotten me better shadow areas? As an aside, would lighter areas be "thicker" and harder to scan through with negative film?

 

[cowanw]

Even if there is a subject scene with so wide a dynamic range that it calls for capture medium that can support 19-stop range, ultimately one has to keep in mind that REPRODUCING that scene on paper or projected image is always inherently limited to the dyamic range of the reproduction media! and offset print images are limited to an even narrower range than conventional photosensitive printing papers.
So it ultimately is a rather moot issue that any B&W film can capture a high DR scene when the photosensitive paper cannot recreate the scene.

This seems true if there is to be only a one to one transfer of values, but compression of tones to fit the reproduction media is standard.
While copying portraits for my book, I was faced with making an image of this glass slide. A single shot would either capture the texture of the jacket lapel and leave the face one dimensional in its lack of texture or give a good 3D modeling of the face and leave a black jacket. Ultimately I found a 16 stop range in the image which I dealt with by merging 4 different exposures.
The point is that there are ways to present information which is available beyond the reduced dynamic range of the reproduction media.

 

[DREW WILEY]

What on earth gives you the impression you're going to get 19 usable stops out of it? I shoot both speeds of TMax all the time in multiple formats all the way from 35mm to 8x10, including a lot of 120 roll film. 12 stops of range is pushing your luck if you get sufficiently skilled metering for this film. Yes, there are a few specialty developers out there that squeeze down exposure extremes with any number of films into printable range, but are of the "compensating" variety which exacts a steep toll to midtone expansion and especially deep shadow differentiation. Some people, like the immediately preceding post, refer to that as "compression". I tend to think of it as stomping on a thick peanut butter sandwich to get it paper thin. In other words, it is a known tool of potential use in your tool kit, but certainly not a silver bullet. What I most dislike about traditional Zone System theory is that it relies too much on "minus development" or "compensation", or whatever you want to call it. But I still recommend learning the Zone System as a starting point.

 

[removed account4]

Hi, I am an experienced digital photog making an excursion into medium format analogue, and due to the cost of film and processing over here, am hoping to use the zone system to get myself shooting okayish photos pretty quickly and consistently.

Today I was given Kodak's 120 Tmax to try out, and when I Googled I found that the dynamic range is 19 stops!

How the heck do you use the zone system on that?

Does one:

• Continue (generally) using three stops in either direction off middle grey (and assume the rest is just latitude for when you want to push the film, which I understand to mean shooting e.g. at 800iso even though it is 100iso)

or:

• Do I need to convert the zone system for a 19 stop range, i.e. a zone now is the equivalent of just under two stops, and I now have a range of approx. 5 stops either side of middle grey?

Much appreciated!

I was just thinking about something ... have you ever contact printed ?
you might go onto michaelandpaula.com >> http://michaelandpaula.com/mp/html/Azo_Main.html
and read up on AZO paper.
its silver chloride and with the right technique you can make prints on that emulsion ( like LUPEX ) have a huge tonal scale
more than most conventional photo papers. you'll have to match your contrast/film processing to the paper and your prints
will only be as large as your negative, but .. who knows maybe you'll end up shooting a 20x24 by the end of the year

 

[Sirius Glass]

What on earth gives you the impression you're going to get 19 usable stops out of it? I shoot both speeds of TMax all the time in multiple formats all the way from 35mm to 8x10, including a lot of 120 roll film. 12 stops of range is pushing your luck if you get sufficiently skilled metering for this film. Yes, there are a few specialty developers out there that squeeze down exposure extremes with any number of films into printable range, but are of the "compensating" variety which exacts a steep toll to midtone expansion and especially deep shadow differentiation. Some people, like the immediately preceding post, refer to that as "compression". I tend to think of it as stomping on a thick peanut butter sandwich to get it paper thin. In other words, it is a known tool of potential use in your tool kit, but certainly not a silver bullet. What I most dislike about traditional Zone System theory is that it relies too much on "minus development" or "compensation", or whatever you want to call it. But I still recommend learning the Zone System as a starting point.

With the right conditions and some luck, I have never gotten more than 14 f/stops out of any film.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Azo paper won't help. You can't print tonality not on the original negative to begin with. But yes, if it is there, you can reproduce a slightly longer tonal range using a contact paper like old Azo, or by certain Alt process like Pt/Pd or carbon printing, or via unsharp masking, or even split printing VC papers. But 19 stops ????? C'mon. Even the Wizard of Oz would be embarrassed making that kind of wild promise. Once again, Google has spoken with a forked tongue - nothing new. Don't believe everything posted on the web.

But it is odd that neither speed of TMax is not being special order cut in ULF sizes, since after the demise of Super-XX and Bergger 200, it's one of the longest scale films still being made, and therefore would be especially appropriate for big contact prints (yet expensive!!!) I generally enlarge, but do sometimes contact print TMax negs.

 

[Vaughn]

The important thing is not how may stops a film can record, but how to get it to record the light in front of the camera in a way that the material (or method of reproduction) can reproduce those stops in a satisfactory manner. Why expose and develop for 10 stops if your process can only render 6 of them.

 

[Oren Grad]

But it is odd that neither speed of TMax is not being special order cut in ULF sizes, since after the demise of Super-XX and Bergger 200, it's one of the longest scale films still being made, and therefore would be especially appropriate for big contact prints (yet expensive!!!) I generally enlarge, but do sometimes contact print TMax negs.

TMX and TMY are available in ULF sizes through Keith Canham, but a purchaser has to be willing to wait for him to accumulate enough orders in any given emulsion/size to meet Kodak's minimum order requirements for a special cut.

https://canhamcameras.com/kodakfilm.html

 

[peterB1966]

What on earth gives you the impression you're going to get 19 usable stops out of it?...

I think that if you read my original post, that was the part I was struggling with, as I had no idea. The other answers since have helped me to understand the role/non-role of the extra stops, and how they do not factor into my zoning.

 

[Michael Firstlight]

I think that if you read my original post, that was the part I was struggling with, as I had no idea. The other answers since have helped me to understand the role/non-role of the extra stops, and how they do not factor into my zoning.

I know you are scanning and this doesn't apply in your case, but we're talking about dynamic range here and that differs between what amount of information is in the negative (much like a RAW file) given the limitation of the wells in the photosites) vs the final print. With DR there's how much information (detail) can be extracted from the deep shadows to detail in the highest highlights - while creating a print- so, there's what I think of as the "maximum potential DR range" of the negative (that can be measured by a densitometer). What matters though is what the DR range results in the final print - we don't display negatives. So what I wonder is what is the maximum DR range in a final print given the greatest DR information available for extraction from the negative? How much DR range (in stops) can one obtain using, say, split-grade printing from an optimal negative given a scene that has very wide DR - exposing for the shadows using the zone approach of course given that film does a good job preserving detail in the highlights?

Regards,
Mike

 

[removed account4]

TMX and TMY are available in ULF sizes through Keith Canham, but a purchaser has to be willing to wait for him to accumulate enough orders in any given emulsion/size to meet Kodak's minimum order requirements for a special cut.

https://canhamcameras.com/kodakfilm.html

Exactly!
And it is.not difficult but translate LF processing and printing techniques to MF .
OP
I’m not a user of the zone system, so can’t help you there but my guess is that it is mostly subject related processing related and printing material related when it comes to using the range of a film. Silver chloride emulsions have a history being long scale ( some suggest longer than modern FB papers ) so it might be a good place to think about…

 

[Bill Burk]

When I think of the long straight line of film I think not of where I will find a subject with 19 stop subject luminance range, but instead I think about how much overexposure the film can handle for a subject with normal seven stops subject luminance range before shouldering or re-reversal

 

[DREW WILEY]

Hi Oren. I get Keith's updates, since I have bought at least 8X10 TMax from him, but that has basically been just leftover boxes from big industrial orders. It seems to take quite awhile to put together even a 5X7 special cut of TMY. Someone would have to drop quite a bit of money for a special ULF minimum cut. I don't know if it's happened yet or not. Most ULF folks seem to rely on more predictable annual Ilford cuts.

Ironcially, somebody tipped me off to a big estate sale not far from here where there were entire stacks of Kodak ULF special cut color films. Not only was it way too outdated to have any realistic use remaining, but the sellers had actually taken the film out of the box and photographed it for the web, to prove those boxes actually contained film ! Now some of that same stuff has finally turned up on EBay. Evidently someone (a person with large successful portrait studio) had acquired special cuts far too big for his own lifetime, now utterly worthless. I kinda added up in my head what that might have hypothetically cost him, and it was a significant sum.

 

[DonW]

If you want to get the most DR out of your film use PyroCat-HD as your developer. It's also a great developer for negs that ultimately will be scanned.

 

[Vaughn]

True, but rarely do we have that much printing control. I do with carbon printing, but a negative with a 10-stop range is not easy to print with silver gelatin paper...a bit easier using some of that contrast control in the creation of the negative.

 

[removed account4]

Nope. It don't work that way.

what is it that doesn't work that way?

translating LF methodology into MF or 35mm ? using the same sorts of developers
that LF users typically use to get the most out of a film or photographing scenes that are conducive to having a long DR?

camera use, scene manipulation, processing manipulation and printing are all entwined ... no matter the format ...

 

[DREW WILEY]

I know darn well the boundaries TMax can do and can't do. Try retaining all the intricate sparkle atop shimmering iced over snow, while at the same time, bagging detail clear down into pits of black volcanic rock in the same scene, under open high altitude sun, plus deep contrast filtration. And TMax is about as good as its gets today, now that classic "straight line films" like Super XX and Bergger 200 are gone, which could extend the straight line down onto the toe about a stop more. But things at the top will block up, and I even use staining pyro developers to assist controlling that issue, sometimes unsharp masking too, as well as premium VC papers. Like Michael, I don't like sacrificing midtone gradation by resorting to gross compression, the inherent Achilles heel of Zone System methodology. But I also know darn well that just because a published curve drifts off the edge of the chart it doesn't necessarily mean what they didn't show in terms of extreme negative density is realistically usable. I've done far too many desitometer plots of my own of these particular films to make wild claims about how they behave at alleged stratospheric density extremes. If somebody wants to photograph a nuke bomb going off - which has obviously been done - then study up on scientific photography, practice special developers for that kind of purpose, and start a world war.

 

[Craig75]

yes the curves are cropped - they only show you the useable range - beyond that everything just turns slowly into soft grey sludge. There's no point being up there unless you want to simulate shooting expired film or other srtistic reasons