Negative density - second opinion wanted

[btaylor]

My prints are perfectly and technically correct and beautiful as well as artistic to the highest order as one would expect from me. I hold back from publishing them to fear of shaming some of those here.

That comment could have come from a certain participant who spells his name in all caps- the difference was he was entirely sirius

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

To me, printing is an integral part of actual photography - in fact the part that makes it "actual".
Just as important as the "capture" part of the process.
Photography without presentation is --- almost nothing.
And my preferred modes of presentation are:
1) prints - preferably made in a darkroom; and
2) projection from a transparency.
I do present my photographs digitally too. And I enjoy the ease of distribution. But it isn't nearly as satisfying.

I don't have a darkroom and print little. I no longer use a slide projector and rather scan (or use digital images) converted to a video slide show with music, titles, etc and play on my 75" HDR 4K TV. There are different ways to present photos today. It's all good.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Another advantage of digitizing your slides and making a video slide show is you can download it to Youtube for others including relatives and friends to see, like this:

 

[runswithsizzers]

I am trying to follow the path that leads to the appearance of a digital color slide show in a discussion about b&w negative density. ;-)

It might be interesting (though not particulary relevant) to compare and contrast the many variables of b&w processing with a standardized process like E-6, but perhaps in another thread...

 

[MattKing]

I don't have a darkroom and print little. I no longer use a slide projector and rather scan (or use digital images) converted to a video slide show with music, titles, etc and play on my 75" HDR 4K TV. There are different ways to present photos today. It's all good.

Which is fine - my point is that one benefits from incorporating one's presentation mode into the decisions made when one releases the shutter or develops the film.
If runwithsizzers was making black and white slides, or creating everything for display on the web, or printing digitally, factoring in the strengths and limitations of those presentation choices is important.
Most likely Alan looks at a potential subject and imagines/asks himself: "I want it to look like X when I show it on my TV - how do I best go about making that happen?"
I approach things similarly, but I have different target media.

 

[MattKing]

I am trying to follow the path that leads to the appearance of a digital color slide show in a discussion about b&w negative density. ;-)

It might be interesting (though not particulary relevant) to compare and contrast the many variables of b&w processing with a standardized process like E-6, but perhaps in another thread...

There is a great American Masters documentary about Dorothea Lange which has a bunch of sound film of Dorothea Lange talking to the camera. In one part, she pulls out a 4x5 black and white negative, holds it up to the light to look at, and exclaims something like "now this is a beautiful negative".
I understand - you want to be able to look at negatives and know when you see a "beautiful negative".
In my experience, those who are relatively new to this tend to think that negatives should look more dense and contrasty than actually is best. Also in my experience, newer photographers tend to under-expose and over-develop (although there are certainly exceptions).

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Which is fine - my point is that one benefits from incorporating one's presentation mode into the decisions made when one releases the shutter or develops the film.
If runwithsizzers was making black and white slides, or creating everything for display on the web, or printing digitally, factoring in the strengths and limitations of those presentation choices is important.
Most likely Alan looks at a potential subject and imagines/asks himself: "I want it to look like X when I show it on my TV - how do I best go about making that happen?"
I approach things similarly, but I have different target media.

Interestingly, when I travel on vacation or go to a party, I shoot digitally. And what comes to mind is using a 16 to 9 format to match video clip format of 16:9 on my TV.

That's unlike when I shoot film of course in 4x5 or 6x7 or 35 mm. Then the format is already selected for me.

 

[Sirius Glass]

There is a great American Masters documentary about Dorothea Lange which has a bunch of sound film of Dorothea Lange talking to the camera. In one part, she pulls out a 4x5 black and white negative, holds it up to the light to look at, and exclaims something like "now this is a beautiful negative".
I understand - you want to be able to look at negatives and know when you see a "beautiful negative".
In my experience, those who are relatively new to this tend to think that negatives should look more dense and contrasty than actually is best. Also in my experience, newer photographers tend to under-expose and over-develop (although there are certainly exceptions).

I was taught that one should be able to read a newspaper through a good negative. Now it is hard to find a newspaper.

 

[runswithsizzers]

[...]
In my experience, those who are relatively new to this tend to think that negatives should look more dense and contrasty than actually is best. Also in my experience, newer photographers tend to under-expose and over-develop (although there are certainly exceptions).

Not sure if that was directed towards me or some of the other posts in this thread which suggested the Arista was underdeveloped? My gut instinct was not telling me the Arista Ultra 400 negs should be more dense and contrasty, but rather I was thinking the HP5+ negs might be too dense and contrasty. So maybe my eye is more experienced than I think(?)

[...] If runwithsizzers was making black and white slides, or creating everything for display on the web, or printing digitally, factoring in the strengths and limitations of those presentation choices is important. [...]

Now that you mention it, I do very much like the look of b&w slides. If b&w slides were as simple to process as color slides, then I would no doubt switch from negatives to positives. By "as simple to process as color slides" I mean, if there was one standardized process for b&w slides (analogous to E-6) which does not require endless testing and tweaking the process to get reliable results. But from what I've read, b&w reversal processing may be even more experimental than b&w negative processing, so I hesitate to go down that rabbit hole.

 

[albireo]

Not sure if that was directed towards me or some of the other posts in this thread which suggested the Arista was underdeveloped?

That was directed at some of the other posts which suggested (correctly) that the Arista was underdeveloped. Unless you limit yourself to wet printing those negatives, you will be able to get much better results if you develop a little longer next time. 15%-20% should be a good start.

 

[MattKing]

There have been in the past a couple of labs that specialize in processing black and white to make transparencies, but at least one has recently stopped.
But when it comes to processing for negatives, there really isn't a need to "endlessly test and tweak". I pay reasonably close attention to my results, but absent a change in developer or film, I haven't needed to test or tweak for years. A bit of adaption to changeable lighting conditions, familiarity with my cameras, meters and flash light sources, plus a willingness to use the adjustment capabilities at the printing or post processing stages reasonably handles whatever variances I encounter.
Which brings it back to the beginning question in this thread. It is necessary to have a good idea about how a "beautiful negative" presents itself, in order to have something that satisfies your needs. In days of yore, we could often determine that by asking the advice of others in person, and those others were often people who printed for others.

 

[MattKing]

That was directed at some of the other posts which suggested (correctly) that the Arista was underdeveloped. Unless you limit yourself to wet printing those negatives, you will be able to get much better results if you develop a little longer next time. 15%-20% should be a good start.

Actually, it was directed more at the world of newer photographers in general.
But I find it interesting that albireo considers darkroom printing is favoured by less development, and scanning is favoured by more development.
Within a reasonable range, my experience is that the reverse applies.
I've posted this a number of times, but I think it still can contribute to the discussion. The negative for this image looks to the eye as being so thin as to be on the edge of disappearing. I do, however, have very satisfying optical prints from it - exhibition prints in fact - as well as this digital version, which I think works well.

 

[runswithsizzers]

That was directed at some of the other posts which suggested (correctly) that the Arista was underdeveloped. Unless you limit yourself to wet printing those negatives, you will be able to get much better results if you develop a little longer next time. 15%-20% should be a good start.

Thank you. That first roll was developed at 7:00 minutes/68*F per manufacturer's recommendations. Well actually, I developed at 70*F and adjusted the time to 6:30. But this time, I will use more ice in my water bath and process at 68*F, just to keep things simple. So using 7:00 as the baseline:
7.0 x 1.15 = 8.05 minutes = 8:03
7.0 x 1.20 = 8.40 minutes = 8:24

I think I will split the difference and try 8:15, which I believe is about an 18% increase (if my math is correct). Does that sound reasonable?

 

[runswithsizzers]

Actually, it was directed more at the world of newer photographers in general.
But I find it interesting that albireo considers darkroom printing is favoured by less development, and scanning is favoured by more development.
Within a reasonable range, my experience is that the reverse applies.
I've posted this a number of times, but I think it still can contribute to the discussion. The negative for this image looks to the eye as being so thin as to be on the edge of disappearing. I do, however, have very satisfying optical prints from it - exhibition prints in fact - as well as this digital version, which I think works well.
View attachment 315910

Beautiful image.

Since I started shooting film again in early 2019, I have "scanned" about 2 dozen rolls of 35mm b&w negative film. I use quotes because after the first few rolls, I retired my film scanner and switched to using a digital camera. Of those, I was able to get presentable digital images from every roll. Not every image from every roll was good, but most of them were OK.

The worst b&w negatives of the lot was a roll of Fuji Acros II that was very thin. I posted about the Acros <here> As it turned out, I had developed those using a lot of Kodak XTOL which was later recalled. Presumably, the defective XTOL was at least partly to blame for the thin negatives. In spite of the thin negatives, some of the digital files did not look too bad, posted <here>

Thin color negatives are another story. I have had some issues with ugly grain and noise from thin color negatives which were probably both underexposed and under developed. It took me a few rolls to realize my local mini lab was doing a very poor job with C-41, as confirmed by a university photography professor.

On the other end - thick negatives - I don't recall having much problem with those, either. Dense underexposed slides were a significant problem for my old film scanner - but as good as can be expected when copied with my newer light source and digital camera.

 

[albireo]

Thank you. That first roll was developed at 7:00 minutes/68*F per manufacturer's recommendations. Well actually, I developed at 70*F and adjusted the time to 6:30. But this time, I will use more ice in my water bath and process at 68*F, just to keep things simple. So using 7:00 as the baseline:
7.0 x 1.15 = 8.05 minutes = 8:03
7.0 x 1.20 = 8.40 minutes = 8:24

I think I will split the difference and try 8:15, which I believe is about an 18% increase (if my math is correct). Does that sound reasonable?

It does in principle, at least to me, but I have to confess I have never used the Arista 400 + Eco Pro film/developer combo, so I'm only guessing.

You mention 'manufacturer's recommendations' - which suggests you are perhaps mapping Foma 400 > Arista 400 and Fomadon Excel > Eco Pro. Is this correct?

If so I would warn against a couple of things

1. According to internet lore, Arista 400 is Foma 400. Even if that's true, Arista seems not to follow Foma's batch numbering, so it's not clear what batch of Foma 400 you're using. As someone else said in the thread (and this mirrors my own experience with this film) there are quite noticeable ISO variations across batches.
2. I often use Fomadon Excel. I also have used Xtol in the past, and I am not entirely sure they're exactly the same thing. Maybe Fomadon Excel is a clone of 'some' version of Xtol? Perhaps reverse engineered based on an old formula? Only guessing here, but the differences are, in my workflow, evident. By extension, I wonder if the same is true for the supposed Ecopro/Xtol equivalence.

As a consequence I think you'll have to experiment in case you'd like to keep using Arista and optimise for that film/developer pair. Personally, I have found I enjoy Foma 400 in the manufacturer's own chemistry. I find my favourite developer for it to be Fomadon LQN, which I use 1+10. I follow religiously the manufacturer's recommendations regarding EI, time and agitation (I usually interpolate their graphs at 20 °C for a target gamma ~ .7, which is great for negative scanning using a dedicated CCD line sensor).The resulting negatives are slightly denser than those you have been getting, and are ideal for my workflow in that they need close to 0 post-processing of the inverted negative.

Here are two 120 scans. Foma 400, Fomadon LQN 1+10. Flat linear negative scan 16bit/channel, followed by gamma correction and setting of the black point to taste.

 

[runswithsizzers]

[...]
You mention 'manufacturer's recommendations' - which suggests you are perhaps mapping Foma 400 > Arista 400 and Fomadon Excel > Eco Pro. Is this correct?

Assumption 1. EcoPro times = Kodak XTOL times (confirmed by email from Freestyle)
Assumption 2. Arista EDU Ultra 400 = Fomapan 400 Action

Arista EDU Ultra 400 pkg insert recommendation for XTOL (straight) = 7:00 @ 20*C
Fomapan 400 package insert recommendation in either XTOL or Fomadon Excel = 7:00 @ 20*C
For what it is worth (in my opinion, not much), the massive Development chart also shows the same 7:00 @ 20*C for the two combinations above, as well as for Arista EDU Ultra 400 + EcoPro, and for Fomapan 400 + EcoPro

If so I would warn against a couple of things

1. According to internet lore, Arista 400 is Foma 400. Even if that's true, Arista seems not to follow Foma's batch numbering, so it's not clear what batch of Foma 400 you're using. As someone else said in the thread (and this mirrors my own experience with this film) there are quite noticeable ISO variations across batches.
2. I often use Fomadon Excel. I also have used Xtol in the past, and I am not entirely sure they're exactly the same thing. Maybe Fomadon Excel is a clone of 'some' version of Xtol? Perhaps reverse engineered based on an old formula? Only guessing here, but the differences are, in my workflow, evident. By extension, I wonder if the same is true for the supposed Ecopro/Xtol equivalence.

As a consequence I think you'll have to experiment in case you'd like to keep using Arista and optimise for that film/developer pair. [...]

Thanks for your reply. Your photo examples look very nice. But based on comments like yours, and by @fotolapinski (post #4) - I think I am done with Foma. Hopefully, I can find some other combination of film and developer I like that requires less experimentation to get predictable results. For now, I am hoping to be able to continue using one of the ascorbic acid developers. And I'll probably stick with a film from Kodak or Ilford.

 

[cliveh]

But as said before, the density/characteristic curve of the negative, in terms of print rendition depends on the type of enlarger you print it with.