Negative density - second opinion wanted

runswithsizzers · Sep 3, 2022

Short version: please help me determine if the negatives on the left are overexposed or overdeveloped? Or maybe the ones on the right are underexposed/underdeveloped?

tl;dr
I just developed two rolls of film - Ilford HP5+ and Arista EDU Ultra 400 (aka Fomapan 400). As you can see, the HP5+ negatives on the left have a lot more density than the Arista Ultra 400, on the right.

Both rolls were metered at EI 250 using a combination of the camera's built-in meter (Pentax MX) and incident readings from a handheld Sekonic L-308S, with preference usually given to the incident meter.

Both rolls were processed in a stock solution of EcoPro ascorbic acid chemistry. For the HP5+ I used the time recommended by EcoPro (and also by Kodak for XTOL) of 8:30 @ 68*F which I adjusted to 7:45 @ 70*F according to the <conversion chart provided by Freestyle>. In retrospect, perhaps I should have used the time provided by Ilford (for Xtol) of 8:00 @ 68*F which adjusts to 7:15 at 70*F? For the Arista Ultra 400, I used a time of 7:00 @ 68*F, adjusted to 6:30 @ 70*F. Arista, Foma, and EcoPro all agree on 7:00 for stock EcoPro/Xtol.

Presently I am not making prints in the darkroom, but I may want to someday, so I want my negatives to be more-or-less normal in density. I doubt I will shoot any more Arista Edu Ultra 400/Fomapan 400, but I do plan to shoot more Ilford HP5+. So the question for me is, Do I need to expose the next roll of HP5 at EI 320 or 400? Or, do I need to use a shorter development time (and how much shorter)? Both? Neither?

randyB · Sep 3, 2022

From what I can see, it looks like some of the HP5 negs are correctly exposed but many are way underexposed. The Artista negs are very under-exposed with just a few that are approaching correct exposure. Your development looks adequate. I also use Arista 400 but I rate it at 200/250 iso. It looks like you have very inconsistent metering, what camera are you using? Does it work correctly?

pentaxuser · Sep 3, 2022

Wait until more people reply to either back up or deny my observations but from what I see, each of the films developed together for the same time seem to have quite large differences in the look of the individual negatives within each film. Could it be more to do with exposure metering than development times?

pentaxuser

fotolapinski · Sep 3, 2022

Practical sensitivity of Fomapan 400 varies from 125 ISO to 400 ISO depending on the batch (emulsion number). I do not use this film without prior testing
Jerzy Łapiński

Alan Edward Klein · Sep 3, 2022

The Ilfords on the left seem more normal.

cliveh · Sep 3, 2022

It depends on what type of enlarger you intend to print them with.

runswithsizzers · Sep 3, 2022

randyB said:
From what I can see, it looks like some of the HP5 negs are correctly exposed but many are way underexposed. The Artista negs are very under-exposed with just a few that are approaching correct exposure. Your development looks adequate. I also use Arista 400 but I rate it at 200/250 iso. It looks like you have very inconsistent metering, what camera are you using? Does it work correctly?

Thanks for your reply. I did rate both of these films at EI 250 for metering. I have 2 Pentax MX cameras, and both got a CLA from Eric Hendrickson in 2018. (each of these two rolls was shot in a different MX.) I have noticed a couple of issues with inconsistent readings from the camera meters though, which is why I check about 80% of my shots with an incident reading from my Sekonic L-308s.

It may not be apparent from the negatives, but often I am attracted to strong side lighting - which results in large portions of the frame being in deep shadows, and only small areas getting normal exposure. So at a casual glance, some of my negatives are going to look thin due to my deliberate choice to leave a lot of the frame in shadow. Examples <here> and <here>

I have been assuming the occsasional odd readings I have been getting from my camera meters are due to some kind corrosion buildup on some internal connection, because if I rotate the ASA and shutter dials, remount the lens, etc. then the suspicious reading goes away, and then the camera meter matches the incident reading more closely (usually within 1/2 stop). When in doubt, I always use the incident reading.

I shot slides for 40 years, so I try to be careful with my metering. From what I have read, incident metering seems simple enough, but it may be that I am missing something about using my incident meter?

runswithsizzers · Sep 3, 2022

pentaxuser said:
Wait until more people reply to either back up or deny my observations but from what I see, each of the films developed together for the same time seem to have quite large differences in the look of the individual negatives within each film. Could it be more to do with exposure metering than development times?

pentaxuser

Thank you. To clarify, each film was developed at a different time, according to the best recommendations I could find from manufacturer's data sheets. I agree that the individual frames within each roll do seem to vary quite a bit. Some of that may be due to the way I have chosen to expose in contrasty side light, but no doubt some of the variation is due to metering mistakes.

Sirius Glass · Sep 3, 2022

randyB said:
From what I can see, it looks like some of the HP5 negs are correctly exposed but many are way underexposed. The Artista negs are very under-exposed with just a few that are approaching correct exposure. Your development looks adequate. I also use Arista 400 but I rate it at 200/250 iso. It looks like you have very inconsistent metering, what camera are you using? Does it work correctly?

pentaxuser said:
Wait until more people reply to either back up or deny my observations but from what I see, each of the films developed together for the same time seem to have quite large differences in the look of the individual negatives within each film. Could it be more to do with exposure metering than development times?

pentaxuser

The exposure varies a lot. Some are good but many are too thin. I recommend that you have your light meters calibrated, OR meter without the sun in the view of light meter if you had used a reflectance meter. Something is consistently off in the light readings OR underdeveloped.

Tom-Thomas · Sep 3, 2022

I would venture to say that the Arista is under-developed rather than under-exposed.
Normally, when a negative film is under-exposed, the area suffers first and most are the shadow areas, resulting in little to no details. The Arista still shows enough shadow details (in fact, to my eyes, they are close to normal density for shadow areas) for me to speculate that it is under-exposed.
Meanwhile, the highlight areas of an under-exposed negative would be (obviously) less dense but will retain decent highlight details (unless it is under-exposed for a lot). The highlights in your Arista look dull (flat) and lack details, which is one characteristic of under-development).

I don't know, but is it possible that this batch of Artista you bought had been re-spooled from a really old, left-over stock of Fomapan? Old film stocks usually need extended development.

runswithsizzers · Sep 3, 2022

Tom-Thomas said:
I would venture to say that the Arista is under-developed rather than under-exposed.
Normally, when a negative film is under-exposed, the area suffers first and most are the shadow areas, resulting in little to no details. The Arista still shows enough shadow details (in fact, to my eyes, they are close to normal density for shadow areas) for me to speculate that it is under-exposed.
Meanwhile, the highlight areas of an under-exposed negative would be (obviously) less dense but will retain decent highlight details (unless it is under-exposed for a lot). The highlights in your Arista look dull (flat) and lack details, which is one characteristic of under-development).

I don't know, but is it possible that this batch of Artista you bought had been re-spooled from a really old, left-over stock of Fomapan? Old film stocks usually need extended development.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I have made some more direct comparisons - the same scene shot at the same camera settings, one from each roll. I switched the lens from camera-to-camera, so even the same lens. From exposure to finished negative, the only thing that is different in each pair of shots is the camera body and the development time.

I can see the differences, but it is hard for me to decide whether I am seeing under-exposure or under-development. Do these examples support the "underdeveloped" theory? This roll of Arista Edu Ultra 400 had an expiration date of 06-2023. I bought it from B&H, I believe it was in January of this year(?)

At this point, I don't really care very much about the Arista 400. I do have a roll in the camera right now, so I might want to change my EI for the last half of that, or fine tune my processing - but I don't plan on buying any more. Going forward, my main concern is whether I need to do something different with the HP5+(?)

In the first pair, both were exposed at 1/1000 sec, f/8.0. In this case, my camera's built-in meters both gave the same reading as my Sekonic L308s incident meter (all at EI 250)
In the second pair both were exposed at 1/500 sec, f/8.0. For this set, the camera's built-in meter for the HP5+ shot matched the Seconic incident reading, but the other camera meter, for the Arista Edu Ultra 400 shot, indicated 1/2-stop over exposure when the camera was set to the incident readings.

Sirius Glass · Sep 3, 2022

runswithsizzers said:
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I have made some more direct comparisons - the same scene shot at the same camera settings, one from each roll. I switched the lens from camera-to-camera, so even the same lens. From exposure to finished negative, the only thing that is different in each pair of shots is the camera body and the development time.

I can see the differences, but it is hard for me to decide whether I am seeing under-exposure or under-development. Do these examples support the "underexposed" theory? This roll of Arista Edu Ultra 400 had an expiration date of 06-2023. I bought it from B&H, I believe it was in January of this year(?)

At this point, I don't really care very much about the Arista 400. I do have a roll in the camera right now, so I might want to change my EI for the last half of that, or fine tune my processing - but I don't plan on buying any more. Going forward, my main concern is whether I need to do something different with the HP5+(?)

In the first pair, both were exposed at 1/1000 sec, f/8.0. In this case, my camera's built-in meter gave the same reading as my Sekonic L308s incident meter (both at EI 250)
In the second pair both were exposed at 1/500 sec, f/8.0. For this set, the camera's built-in meter for the HP5+ shot matched the Seconic incident reading, but the other camera meter, for the Arista Edu Ultra 400 shot, indicated 1/2-stop over exposure when the camera was set to the incident readings.

View attachment 315051 View attachment 315052

The first, second and fourth look well exposed while the third looks badly overexposed. Go back to box speed and adjust the exposure for shadows individually on each exposure instead of downrating the ISO and your exposures will improve.

Tom-Thomas · Sep 3, 2022

runswithsizzers said:
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I have made some more direct comparisons - the same scene shot at the same camera settings, one from each roll. I switched the lens from camera-to-camera, so even the same lens. From exposure to finished negative, the only thing that is different in each pair of shots is the camera body and the development time.

I can see the differences, but it is hard for me to decide whether I am seeing under-exposure or under-development. Do these examples support the "underdeveloped" theory? This roll of Arista Edu Ultra 400 had an expiration date of 06-2023. I bought it from B&H, I believe it was in January of this year(?)

At this point, I don't really care very much about the Arista 400. I do have a roll in the camera right now, so I might want to change my EI for the last half of that, or fine tune my processing - but I don't plan on buying any more. Going forward, my main concern is whether I need to do something different with the HP5+(?)

In the first pair, both were exposed at 1/1000 sec, f/8.0. In this case, my camera's built-in meters both gave the same reading as my Sekonic L308s incident meter (all at EI 250)
In the second pair both were exposed at 1/500 sec, f/8.0. For this set, the camera's built-in meter for the HP5+ shot matched the Seconic incident reading, but the other camera meter, for the Arista Edu Ultra 400 shot, indicated 1/2-stop over exposure when the camera was set to the incident readings.

View attachment 315051 View attachment 315052

Going by the 1st and 2nd shots.
Looking at the 1st shot (HP5+), I estimate that there appears to have a difference of about .75 to 1 stop in light intensity comparing the sky and the truck door. Even if the film is under-exposed, this ratio of difference in density between the sky and the truck should more or less remain the same (except in the case of severe under-exposure). But in the Artista shot, the sky and truck door show very similar density. This, to me, indicates a case of under-development because development time affects highlight faster and more than it does on other areas This, plus the fact that the shadow details in the HP5+ shot are similar to that in the Arista shot.

This is my take. I am interested in hearing what other people think.

ic-racer · Sep 3, 2022

Under exposure here. Notice the lack of detail in shadow values. Development time/temp affects mostly the highlights. You can't tell much about "the right development" without looking at prints. For example, I have decades of experience printing and I could get a decent print from most of those negatives. However, some will be very challenging. Your "right development" will yield negatives that are easiest for you to print with your equipment.

ic-racer · Sep 3, 2022

Also, be careful using the incident meter. Frequently those are calibrated for studio or flatwork. Taking one out in the field is challenging. For example you have to control how much light hits the dome, especially in the sun.

Example:

You have some flatwork to copy. You have a barn with one side in the sun and one side in the shade. You place the flatwork on the shade side of the barn, get an incident reading and make your exposure. It comes out perfect.
You then put the same flatwork on the sunny side, take the reading and make the exposure. It again comes out perfect.

Next you decide to take a picture of the barn, including both the side in the shadow and the side in the sun.
How to set the meter??? You can take the middle of the two readings or adjust the dome so the sun falls on 1/2 or use the reading from the shadow side only. Clearly some experience with your particular meter will be needed to know how the negative will come out.

There was one of those epic threads on "C" (for incident) and "K" (for reflected) calibration constants a while back, but somewhat hard to follow.

Here is some more organized information summarized in a web posting:

Sekonic's Calibration Constants are:

K = 12.5 (for spot mode)

C = 250 (for incident mode)

(Sekonic's manual says that it uses 340 instead of 250 when the lumisphere is out, but changing the lumisphere position actually changes the absolute calibration, not the relationship of the absolute calibration to the exposure read-out. So, the relationship of aboslute reading to exposure actually stays static with calibration constant of 250 with sphere in both positions.)

Using these values, we can see that incident and spot should NOT agree on an 18% gray card, but on a 15.7% gray card, becuase:
pi*12.5/250=.157

Exposure Equations & Light Meter Calibration

www.yedlin.net

runswithsizzers · Sep 3, 2022

ic-racer said:
Also, be careful using the incident meter. Frequently those are calibrated for studio or flatwork. Taking one out in the field is challenging. For example you have to control how much light hits the dome, especially in the sun.

Example:

You have some flatwork to copy. You have a barn with one side in the sun and one side in the shade. You place the flatwork on the shade side of the barn, get an incident reading and make your exposure. It comes out perfect.
You then put the same flatwork on the sunny side, take the reading and make the exposure. It again comes out perfect.

Next you decide to take a picture of the barn, including both the side in the shadow and the side in the sun.
How to set the meter??? You can take the middle of the two readings or adjust the dome so the sun falls on 1/2 or use the reading from the shadow side only. Clearly some experience with your particular meter will be needed to know how the negative will come out.

There was one of those epic threads on "C" (for incident) and "K" (for reflected) calibration constants a while back, but somewhat hard to follow.

Here is some more organized information summarized in a web posting:

Exposure Equations & Light Meter Calibration

www.yedlin.net

Thank you for your replies.

As a slide shooter, I would probably meter the barn for the sun to protect the highlights, and accept the fact that my shadows will probably be without detail. With negative film, I might be more inclined to average the sun and shade readings. Or if the shot was really important, I might decide which shadow to meter for detail in zone 3 and reduce that reading by two stops.

I am beginning to suspect there may be something wrong with the way I take incident readings. During the 40 years I shot slides using the meters built into my cameras (mostly Pentax) - sure I blew the exposure some of the time, but mostly, they were acceptable (after I learned where to point the camera to get the best reading). I started using an incident meter in 2019 when I took a medium format photography class at my local university. (Our Mamiya C220 TLR cameras were meterless.) I believe I am following recommended practices, but maybe I am not(?)

Generally, I stand in the same light as my subject and point my meter's incident dome towards the camera, as per the instructions in the Owner's Manual for my Sekonic L-308s, as reproduced here:

However, I just checked Gossen's booklet titled the "Exposure Metering Compendium" and it has slightly different advice, suggesting the meter's incident dome be aimed, "...in the case of three-dimensional subjects with the main source of flight in front of the subject, towards the bisector between the camera and the main source of light."

I have not been doing that, so I will do some testing to see if it helps. Still, I notice my incident meter can be rotated a fair bit before the reading changes by as much as half a stop - and I am shooting negative film - so I wonder how precisely the meter really needs to be aimed?

Talk of meter calibration is interesting, but I'm not sure how relevant to my situation. I have four light meters (two in cameras, and two hand-held) which - more-or-less - all agree with each other (I just checked them again). So it is hard for me to believe all four meters are biased in the same direction to the same degree. But results suggest I do seem to have a problem with consistency. In my experiece with monitoring instrumentation in a clinical laboratory, calibration is indicated when there is an accuracy problem (bias), but calibration does not usually help with precision problems (random error).

MattKing · Sep 3, 2022

This is very hard to do over the internet.
And it is equally hard to do when the "test" images are varied, and exposed in varied light.
And it is even harder to do when there are two different films, and you are using a developer that you haven't necessarily got familiar with.
If I were to try to do this myself, I would keep it to one film at a time, cut down the variability in the subjects and lighting, and do a bit of test bracketing of the exposure - noting each time exactly how I approached the metering.
And then I'd try developing a few rolls (or portions of rolls) at a bracketed set of developing times.
And the final part of the test would be creating presentation prints - using the method available to me.

Side lighting is tricky. It is even trickier if you are trying to use it for refining your metering.

With all that in mind, I'd guess that the HP5+ is developed enough, and the Ultra 400 needs more development. And in respect to exposure, the results vary, with a tendency toward under-exposure.

MattKing · Sep 3, 2022

As for incident metering technique, some incident meters have much larger and effective integrating domes than others. The best technique for a particular meter may be slightly different than for another, but the results from a particular model should be consistent. Strong side lighting is, however, a condition that requires careful technique and a purposive approach. You need to decide where your primary interest in the subject is, and tailor your exposure decisions toward that. Using the example you linked to with the upside down wheelbarrow, you need to make a decision on whether you intend to favour the highlights, or to favour the darkly shadowed area, and you need to position the meter accordingly.

runswithsizzers · Sep 3, 2022

MattKing said:
[...]
I'd guess that the HP5+ is developed enough, and the Ultra 400 needs more development. And in respect to exposure, the results vary, with a tendency toward under-exposure.

Thanks so much for your feedback.

MattKing said:
[...]
Strong side lighting is, however, a condition that requires careful technique and a purposive approach. You need to decide where your primary interest in the subject is, and tailor your exposure decisions toward that. Using the example you linked to with the upside down wheelbarrow, you need to make a decision on whether you intend to favour the highlights, or to favour the darkly shadowed area, and you need to position the meter accordingly.

The up-side-down wheelbarrow shot came out just about the way I saw it in my mind, so I guess I positioned the meter about right - for that one (there were several other attempts that were less successful). Years of shooting slides has got me used to the idea of not having much shadow detail when shooting in contrasty light. I guess I kinda like that deep shadow look, tho I may be overdoing it a bit.

So true what you say about the difficulty of trying to troubleshoot film results over the internet. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner, but my former university photography professor would probably be willing to look at my negatives. She has offered to let me add my used fixer to the university's waste disopsal bin, so maybe I'll take the negatives and see if she has an opinion.

ic-racer · Sep 3, 2022

runswithsizzers said:
. During the 40 years I shot slides ...

Ok, so you are just new to B&W development? Yes, unlike slides the negatives contrast is around 0.6 to 0.8, so they are less contrasty overall. Makes it more challenging to know what is going on. So many will do the proof sheets or make proof prints to evaluate. I think it takes years to really evaluate negatives without printing them, unlike slides where you can see right away.

Also, unlike slides, the negatives can have more latitude, depending on the level of enlargement. Contact prints can have a few stops of over-exposure latitude. But in no case is there much under-exposure latitude, except maybe t-grain film with high energy developer.

Craig · Sep 4, 2022

It's a much repeated platitude, but with slides you expose for the highlights, and with negatives expose for the shadows.

With slide film, if you overexpose the highlights, they are gone and you have clear film. So you preserve what highlight is important and let the shadows fall where they may. With B&W negative film, if the shadows are underexposed, then again you have clear film base and any detail there is gone - when printed these will simply turn to black. So you expose for the shadow detail you want, and let the highlights fall where they may - those can be dodged back in the printing process to bring in detail.

The ideal for both films is the same - give exposure to the portion of the scene that you want to preserve the minimum detail the film can capture, but that minimum detail portion is reversed between slides and negatives (highlight vs shadow).

So with slides you err on the side of underexposure, and with negatives err on the side of overexposure.

MattKing · Sep 4, 2022

I've often referred people to the internet site linked below when they have questions about assessing negatives. The visual aid referred to in it isn't perfect, but it does give someone at least an idea about how to approach the issue:
Assessing negatives
One of the things I particularly like about the linked site is the appearance of the negative described as the correctly exposed and developed negative. Many less experienced people seem to assume that negatives should appear more dense and contrasty then is actually best.

albireo · Sep 10, 2022

Tom-Thomas said:
I would venture to say that the Arista is under-developed rather than under-exposed.
Normally, when a negative film is under-exposed, the area suffers first and most are the shadow areas, resulting in little to no details. The Arista still shows enough shadow details (in fact, to my eyes, they are close to normal density for shadow areas) for me to speculate that it is under-exposed.
Meanwhile, the highlight areas of an under-exposed negative would be (obviously) less dense but will retain decent highlight details (unless it is under-exposed for a lot). The highlights in your Arista look dull (flat) and lack details, which is one characteristic of under-development).

I agree with Tom-Thomas.

Both sets of negatives are IMO equally sub-optimally exposed (high variance, possibly your combo of meters and fast changing light conditions - any chance sunlight was changing quickly between the measurement and the shot for most of these?).

The HP5+ are somewhat over-developed. The Foma 400 are severely underdeveloped.

foc · Sep 10, 2022

MattKing said:
I've often referred people to the internet site linked below when they have questions about assessing negatives. The visual aid referred to in it isn't perfect, but it does give someone at least an idea about how to approach the issue:
Assessing negatives
One of the things I particularly like about the linked site is the appearance of the negative described as the correctly exposed and developed negative. Many less experienced people seem to assume that negatives should appear more dense and contrasty then is actually best.

Ilford also have some good information on assessing negatives.

https://www.ilfordphoto.com/common-processing-problems/

Horatio · Sep 10, 2022

Re: exposure, why not compare your meter readings against "Sunny-16" and bracket a couple of exposures?

Negative density - second opinion wanted

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