Novice Developer question

Kind of an odd question-- and possibly an impossible one at that.

I'm a novice at B&W film development-- I recently decided to enter the world of large format photography (I admit, the research is something to do while not going anywhere along with the rest of the world), so I kitted myself out with a camera, some lenses, various bits and pieces related thereunto, some film, and some chemicals (and related paraphernalia).

Then I took 4 exposures, realized two of them were moderately overexposed, and put them into the "revisit later" pile.

The other two exposures, however, came out fairly well-- I think. And here's the problem: I lack the knowledge to be able to grade my own work. I'm reasonably happy with the exposure and the focus, but the question is, could I have done better developing them?

So, technical details: Arista EDU 400 (Fomapan 400), developed with Ilfosol 3 @ 68F, 8:30 minutes, 30 seconds agitation first minute, 4 agitations each minute after, rinsed (I was warned about the fomapan anti-halation green menace) once, Ilfostop for 15 seconds, Ilford Rapid Fixer for 3:00 minutes, rinsed with the Ilford 5/10/20 method for rotary tanks. Tank was actually the Stearman SP-445.

And since all this would be pointless without an image:



Scanned with Epson v800 / Silverfast SE.

Given all that information, and understanding that there are N+ a whole lot of variables here, is there anything development-wise I could / should have done to improve the final image?

Welcome to Photrio.
In answer to your question - it is impossible to tell!
The description of your process seems fine.
The result certainly looks attractive to me, but I have no idea whatsoever if the results you obtained are close to what you were trying for.
Are they?
Is there anything that you see in the results that doesn't meet your expectations? It meets my expectations for a pleasant image on a computer screen, but that isn't a very demanding requirement.
The additional complicating factor is that what I see here is a substantially reduced facsimile of the digital file you created by scanning, and that digital file is itself a facsimile of the negative. The creation of the original digital file involved a whole bunch of software and hardware manipulations, only some of which were under your control.
All of which is to say that it is really difficult to analyze stuff like this through the internet.
If we were in the same room (Covid 19 precautions aside) I could tell you more by examining the negative itself. I could tell even more if I had a chance to print it in a darkroom, just as some of the people here could tell you more if they could both look at the original negative and either scan it themselves or closely examine your existing scan, and work with the results.
The most demanding test is to print the result. If the raw material is there in the negative, then printing it will reveal that.
And it is in the printing process one discovers what changes, if any, are needed in the exposure process, the development process, or both.
One final point - the subject of the image you uploaded is a very attractive one, but it is fairly challenging to "capture" well. It may be the case that the development technique you used here is well suited to this wide subject luminance range, high acutance subject, but poorly suited to something very different, like a portrait of a child that demands lower contrast and gentle transition of tones. Once you gain experience in this, you will probably get to the point where you will be able to adjust your methods to match the requirements of the subject. That flexibility is another reason it is difficult to answer your question, because I would guess you are really asking whether you need to do something in order to achieve the one, single best result. There really isn't just one.
It looks to be a great start. I'd suggest taking confidence from this, but continue to learn.

Most of what you had said had occurred to me (I did note it might be an impossible question to answer), but it's nice to know I wasn't crazy for thinking it.

The most effective way to critique the negative is obviously to throw it on a light table, and break out the loupe-- but of course, covid-19 makes that somewhat difficult right now. For myself, the standard was basically, if the negative had a passing resemblance to what I was looking at when I took the picture, then it's a win.

The scene is quite literally, the far side of my back yard. I didn't even leave the house to take it-- But I did open the door.

I could have uploaded a higher resolution image (I scanned it at 600 and 2400 dpi), but I didn't feel there would be much benefit to uploading the high res to here because as you say, most of it is subjective.

Still, since your immediate reaction didn't suggest there were glaring mistakes made, I appreciate the feedback (and would even if there were glaring mistakes to be pointed out). So thank you.

You are welcome. I hope that there was some help embedded in what I posted.
Don't hesitate to ask if other questions arise. This sort of format works better if you seek to solve particular problems, so if you if you encounter something more narrowly focused, you might find us more useful.
Although I would never promise that you will never receive contradictory advice as well!
By the way, if you had tried to upload a higher resolution file here, you might have gotten frustrated.
The uploader on Photrio doesn't like big files. With black and white, my best results come with images no more than 1200 pixels on the longest side - sometimes a bit less if the image is square. With colour, I get best results with images no more than 800 pixels on the longest side.

I agree with MattKing, your process looks fine, you may need to work out the exposure for Foma 400. When you said you took 4 exposures did you bracket the same scene or shoot 4 different scenes using a light meter average exposure?

The idea was to take one photo at recommended speed, and another one stop over, as I had read that Foma 400 does well treated as ISO 200.

However, the first set, the lighting was much brighter, and the EV range was just over 6 (ranging from 9 to 15.5, if I recall). I'm using an analog spot meter, and my brain shorted out a bit when confronted with fractional f/stops and shutter speed-- instead of picking an aperture value to match a shutter speed, I rounded off the shutter speed, and managed inadvertently to take both exposures at the same EV-- and both were slightly high as I was concerned about shadow detail. As a result, the two trees in the foreground are glowing somewhat.

The second pair (same scene, different time, different lens), the EV range was only 5, and was much easier to get right. I also realized my error from the previous set, and actually shot my intended exposures. For what it's worth, the image above is at ISO 400-- the image shot at ISO 200 was usable, but I preferred the box speed version.

FWIW, in terms of restricted equipment, a tablet or cell phone displaying an image in full screen with all-white frame (or with a light table app, which does essentially the same thing) can sub for a light table. Assuming you're aren't completely new to photography, you probably have some lenses around, for a 35mm SLR, rangefinder, or DSLR. A 50mm lens makes a nice loupe, as does a 25 mm telescope eyepiece, if you have one of those.

What a loupe will show you, though, is mainly sharpness and local contrast, which aren't everything.

Generally, with film, there's nothing wrong with a small amount of overexposure (slide film likes it less than negative films, but even there a third to half stop is generally okay).

Worth noting that nearly all leaf shutters run slow. If you check the Stearman Press subforum, they recently posted a method of using your cell phone (and computer, most likely) to measure your shutter speeds (for free!), to about 4 millisecond precision (which is fine, because it's usually the slower speeds that are furthest off). A slow shutter might contribute to your finding that box speed was preferable over one stop slower, though that's also affected by what developer, temperature, time, and agitation you use.

I used Foma 200 in 4X5 for a very long time, recently switched to Foma 400 for the extra stop, just did a ring around test with MCM 100, by eyeball looks like 200 is the best personalized ISO for my set up, which seems typical for Foma. Looking at the published data sheet the closest to 400 is Microphan while Xtol is around 200. I tested with my 152mm lens but will repeat with my 135 and 210 as they have different shutters.

Donald Qualls said:

Worth noting that nearly all leaf shutters run slow. If you check the Stearman Press subforum, they recently posted a method of using your cell phone (and computer, most likely) to measure your shutter speeds (for free!), to about 4 millisecond precision (which is fine, because it's usually the slower speeds that are furthest off). A slow shutter might contribute to your finding that box speed was preferable over one stop slower, though that's also affected by what developer, temperature, time, and agitation you use.

Click to expand...

Before I saw that post, I came up with my own method, which is both better, and worse. I grabbed a USB microphone, and recorded the shutter at each speed, fed it into an audio editor called Audacity, and measured the time between the end of the first click and the start of the second. I say it's better because at 44 thousand samples per second, I'm getting a more precise reading. On the other hand, a high speed video would show shutter operation more clearly, and there's a certain amount of interpretation of the audio waveform.

The lens that overexposed, if my measurements are good (and they're a bit subjective) suggest that 1/30 and slower is a bit fast, and 1/60 and faster is a bit slow (on this particular lens). The not shown overexposed image was taken at 1/125, which is the worst offender in the "slow speed" department.

Your end goal here is a scan, not a wet print, yes? Then what matters is that your scanner can extract all the information you want from the negative. In what you posted, the highlights look a little blown. Could be due to post processing only, or they could be really too dense for your scanner. See if you can retrieve them if you adjust the scanning/PP parameters. If not, I'd say reduce development until you can.

grain elevator said:

Your end goal here is a scan, not a wet print, yes? Then what matters is that your scanner can extract all the information you want from the negative. In what you posted, the highlights look a little blown. Could be due to post processing only, or they could be really too dense for your scanner. See if you can retrieve them if you adjust the scanning/PP parameters. If not, I'd say reduce development until you can.

Click to expand...

I'm not set up for wet printing-- and may not be for some time. I went back and looked more closely at the negative, and the blown out areas in the scan still have details visible on the negative, so for the moment, I'll work on fine-tuning the scanning process (which oddly enough, even though I'm IT by trade, I have less confidence in the scanning right now than the exposure / development part of the process).

Thanks!

grat said:

I'm not set up for wet printing-- and may not be for some time. I went back and looked more closely at the negative, and the blown out areas in the scan still have details visible on the negative, so for the moment, I'll work on fine-tuning the scanning process (which oddly enough, even though I'm IT by trade, I have less confidence in the scanning right now than the exposure / development part of the process).

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Most films will hold details in areas so dense that some scanners can't cope. So details being visible to the human eye is not enough if you want good scans. Do fine tune the scanning process, but be aware that if you still can't get the highlights, you may need to reduce development (at least for contrasty scenes like that one).