• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

Over expose and over develop question??

stradibarrius

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
Jan 17, 2009
Messages
1,452
Location
Monroe, GA
Format
Medium Format
Ralph Gibson says that to achieve the look that he has, he over exposes the film and the overdevelops it and that gives him his contrast/grain look.
If I shoot Tri-X400 at 200 and developed it in Rodinal 1+50 the time for normal development is 14 min. What % would you increase the development as a starting place?
 
Waxing eloquent tonight and thought, "For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread." from the English poet Alexander Pope's An essay on criticism, 1709

Sorry ol' Strad, I couldn't resist. That's my story and I am sticking to it!

Steve
 
Hey Barry,

I'd try an extra 20-30%, this is going to be a touchy/feely/experimental thing though, be ready to waste a few rolls.

IMO you should also just ignore Steve's response.

Rules kill creativity.
 
I don't know anything about Ralph Gibson but I assume that as you use the present tense "says" he is still alive. Is he contactable? He might respond if he thought he had a follower in his footsteps and tell you by how much he overexposes and overdevelops.

pentaxuser
 
markbarendt said:
Hey Barry,

IMO you should also just ignore Steve's response.
Click to expand...

There is a button for that, and by golly it works like a charm. It's amazing how great this place is without its requisite trolls.
 

Hey Barry,

Gibson exposed (still exposes I assume), Tri-X @ ISO100 to 400 and uses Rodinal 1:25 for around 11 minutes. Basically pretty rough, but it works. Agitation is three inversions at the beginning and then three slow and gentle inversions every 1 1/2 minutes. He also exposes using sunny 16 and for the highlights. You will find that when you do this at, let's say ISO100, your highlights will sparkle but they are not blown. There is a lot of information in those negative and nice grain. @200, things are a bit more balanced, and 400...is 400.
He also did some nice work in the darkroom to print those out, obviously, but again, those negative yield a lot of potential.
If you look at my website, in the gallery "shades of reason" most of the images are processed as above, and you may want to get this book as well, as it is interesting..http://www.amazon.com/Darkroom-Wynn-Bullock/dp/0912810203

Oh, and yes, ignore Sirius and his dark humor

Best,

Max
 
stradibarrius said:
Ralph Gibson says that to achieve the look that he has, he over exposes the film and the overdevelops it and that gives him his contrast/grain look.
Click to expand...

No doubt. For any film/developer combo, graininess is directly related to density. The more dense the resulting film, the grainier it will look.

To a point. After that, more density creates a "cooked" look, and you can get some artifacts like halos around dark/light transitions. I found that with a Dmax of around 3.0 on Tri-X. But the cooked look started around 2.0 or a little higher IIRC.

That said, the most important property that dictates graininess is the film. Start with a grainy film and enhance the graininess in processing. Tri-X in Rodinal is as good a place to start as any.
 
20% was where I thought I might "start" Mark and I agree I will have to go through some film to find the look "I" am happy with.
Steve, I am not sure what you were trying to tell me but I can be pretty foolish sometimes!!!!
 
Stad, just jerking you around because you are such a good sport.
 
I knew you were just kidding, but you are right...trying to reproduce his results may be something over my head.. But if I miss the mark this time I will learn something that will get me closer.

My first roll of film was a complete failure...
 
Toffle said:
There is a button for that, and by golly it works like a charm. It's amazing how great this place is without its requisite trolls.
Click to expand...

Amen.

Barry, why not bracket a roll of film and push it one stop and see what you like. If shooting sheet film, you can also do an exposure check by withdrawing the darkslide, and then when you process the film, you can snip it perpendicular to your exposure test strips and develop those for different times. Thus you get an exposure/dev time matrix and you can deduce the optimal exposure/dev combo with one test sheet.

Alternative exposure and processing is an excellent thing to explore, I have seen some very surprising results. Some were intentional, some were merely interesting mistakes.
 
For this roll I used a 645 format camera. Of the 15 shots only 4 were exposed properly but I missed the focus??? This is not something I normally have a problem with. The other 11 frames were so under exposed that I could even make out what was on the frame...just a thin whisper of an image? Agin not something that is normal for me. I used my hand held meter. I will just try again.

Keith That is a good idea.
 
markbarendt said:
Rules kill creativity.
Click to expand...
Yes, but they're also the starting point for it. Frank Zappa used to say he wished he had never learned music theory, by which I think he meant he wished he could think about music without a reference point. I wish I could think about photography with no reference point, but that won't happen.

There's a german poem--I forget by whom--where a father is talking to his sleeping son. He says "Listen carefully to what I say: don't listen to me." That's rules talking to us, I think.
 
stradibarrius said:
The other 11 frames were so under exposed that I could even make out what was on the frame...just a thin whisper of an image
Click to expand...

I would expect the opposite of this. Whenever I've tried, the negs have been very dense and took a long time to print. The most pronounced effect I got was with Neopan 400 exposed as 100 and developed as if 800. So, I suppose that's 2 stops over exposed and 3 stops over developed (or is it one stop as it should be 400?). Anyway, very contrasty and very grainy photos were the result.
 
stradibarrius said:
I have had some music teachers that agree with Frank Zappa. There is a point where rules can kill creativity but a few rules will get you headed in the right direction.
Click to expand...

But how will you ever know how to break the rules if you don't know what they are in the first place? :munch:
 
stradibarrius said:
I have had some music teachers that agree with Frank Zappa. There is a point where rules can kill creativity but a few rules will get you headed in the right direction.
Click to expand...

I've been a high school music teacher for 30 years. I often have discussions with my students where we discuss rules, how they came to be, what we can do with them, what we can do without them...

Sometimes we make our own rules. Occasionally it blows up in our face, but sometimes the effect is absolutely incredible... for example one half of a class singing Loch Lomond in F, while the other half sings Shalom Cheverim in D minor; using an awareness of the rules to depart from them. (the effect... a qualified WOW!)

The longer I teach, the more I learn from my students.
 
Toffle said:
for example one half of a class singing Loch Lomond in F, while the other half sings Shalom Cheverim in D minor
Click to expand...

F and Dm? Too close.

Ask half of them to sing in B# and the rest in Fb!

(when sitting in on guitar with a couple of friends once, I asked one of them what key the next song was in and was told it was B sharp!).


Steve.
 
hi barry

you might try a different developer and a different approach.
bracket your film so it is 6 stops over exposed by the end of it
then when you are done with the roll ( i would use 35mm so you have more frames to work with )
cut your film before you develop it into strips.
each strip should be kind of the same ( if it isn't exact it is ok ) length
develop each strip 50% more than the last.
when you are done with each of the 6 strips you can compare then and see which one works for you.
dektol ( d72 ) for years was used as a print and film / plate developer
starting points were usually 1:5 for 5 mins, and 1:7 for 7 mins
people always say" dektol = big grain &C " but it really isn't true
dektol was similar to agfa / ansco 125
which was listed in all the handbooks as giving "crisp and clean negatives"
so it might be fun to try dektol 1:7 developed for 7 mins, 11 mins, than 14 mins and then 17 mins ...

if your film is TOO contrasty, try the same approach but diluting it more, and trying short stand development
starting at double the time ( so 1:14 for 28 mins &C )

i'm not familiar with ralph gibson's work, so i am not sure what look you are interested in
but from my own limited experience ( only about 2 years which isn't long )
i over develop everything by at least 1 or 6 ( depending on the camera ) stops and stand develop in
a coffee based developer with print developer mixed in ( so it is about 1:10 print:coffee)
i let it stand for about 1/2 hour and the contrast and grain is pretty heavy.
the 35mm and 120 i process like this print and numericalize pretty easy
and the contact prints from 4x5 are dense and print slow .. but they give
a depth that regular film can't compare with ...

not sure if i am much help


good luck
john
 
Last edited by a moderator:
"The longer I teach, the more I learn from my students."
Another Amen.
I never learn so much as when I'm in class supposedly teaching them. Wouldn't it be funny if the rules were more for the teachers than the students?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register