Over Expose, Over Develop

Vaughn · Jul 30, 2021

That's wonky, but as long as I know what you mean, it's also cool.

Edited to add: I always wonder about discussions here about ISO settings, exposure and development times -- without including info about SBR (scene brightness range), printing method/equipment/material, and the desired tonality of the print, any discussion can really only be for general information. Definitely all are recommended reading, one just needs to take the info and apply it in context of one's own work.

MattKing · Jul 30, 2021

Don,
Do you adjust exposure to suit the subject? I do.
A manufacturer's film sensitivity recommendation is subject independent. It leads to reliable averages, which for a roll of slide film will result in many shots having the right exposure, along with a few shots having areas that are too dark (too little exposure) and a few shots having areas that are too light (too much exposure).
I consider the latter to be overexposed, and I use that term for them. What term do you use for slides that have highlight areas that are too light?
I refer to slide film, because negative film gives another chance to repair the results, thus complicating the matter.

removed account4 · Jul 30, 2021

Don Heisz said:
No. Overexposure is when the negative has been given more exposure than recommended by the manufacturer based on the lighting. It does not mean "unacceptably dense result".
Overexposure does not necessarily generate "unacceptably dense results." If it is exactly the way you wanted it to be, you wanted it overexposed.

couldn't agree more !

Alex Benjamin said:
His "zone system is dead", if other than in jest, signals a poor understanding of what the zone system is about and how it has evolved. The zone system isn't about shooting at box speed or metering a grey card and shooting at the given combination shutter speed/aperture. The zone system is about placement

sure .. he can claim its dead if he wants, and he can made arguments with examples of why he thinks its dead. does it really matter if it is or isn't ?
Perez claimed film photography was dead 15 years ago, and for most people it was ( and still is ) dead I mean whenever I am using a camera in public most people ask if I can still get film or film is still being made or if I go on an airplane I might have to explain to a TSA person what 35mm film is or a 4x5 camera is and show them the film because they have never heard of it.
just because someone says something doesn't mean its completely true... in the case of the author of the blog maybe for him and the way he sees it, its an antiquated system that hasn't really been updated ( maybe he needs to read some Ralph Lambrect ! ) .. maybe he was just saying stuff to stir the pot and get traffic to his blog and website ( like this tread is doing ) ? maybe he has no idea what he is talking about? not sure if it matters though he seems to have his own "tummy" system that in his comments he said was working for him... whether its about placement or something else... if it involves sliding the exposure to a place where one is giving more light to the film than the manufacturer suggested in their lab rating of the film its over exposure, and then if the person is adding time in the development more than the manufacturer recommended it's over development. whether or not the zone system is dead, it really doesn't matter.

Raghu Kuvempunagar · Jul 31, 2021

Reminds of another thread on the subject of zone system is dead. Did anybody actually try @ypkennedy's method?

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/the-zone-system-is-dead.157951/

KenS · Aug 1, 2021

For the past 30+years I have followed Dr. Martin Scott's recommendation for Kodachrome (which had the 'tightest of processing) to meter for a "white with texture" and 'open up 3+1/3 of an f-stop and provide "normal development".. and let the 'shadows' fall where they may. His reasoning was the viewer's eye is drawn more to information in the lighter areas of the final image. Strange as it may seem.... it works JUST AS WELL for B/W film.

Ken

RalphLambrecht · Aug 1, 2021

Richard Man said:
(I have searched the Photrio archive and nothing exactly like this was discussed, the closest was the question about the Ralph Gibson look (which uses the same methodology))

All these talks about XTOL and 777 got me googling again and I found this:
http://www.johnnypatience.com/the-zone-system-is-dead

Basically: over expose 1 to 2 stops (bring Zone II/III to Zone V), then also OVER develop by one stop). For example, shoot Tri-X at ASA 200, but use the timing for developing Tri-X shot at ASA800. This provides a dense negative with lots of info in the shadows, and rely on the modern film emulsions to hold highlight details.

The author says he has tried it with multiple film AND also dark room printing with the same results (in addition to scan and print).

I tried a few sheets of 4x5 with HP5+ and XTOL, and the results do look promising. These photos are not much by themselves, just for testing purpose, and yes, they are scans, but this is totally for illustration purpose. Check the linked article to see the author's darkroom prints.

Oh, I was also using swing to show off view camera capability of getting more things in focus despite using a 150mm lens at F5.6 ("equivalent" to 40mm at F1.5 or thereabout), and using a soft focus lens at that to show off some blooming effect.

this goes against everything I've learned and experienced in the last 50 years.

pentaxuser · Aug 1, 2021

RalphLambrecht said:
this goes against everything I've learned and experienced in the last 50 years.

Well Ralph as I said a few posts ago his current gallery which gives his speeds for some Tri-X but more especially Pan F suggests that he too had decided that what he did in his first linked website was against everything learned and experienced as well. He now appears to be seriously underexposing with no mention of what is development time is

No mention of where on the road to Damascus he saw the light that changed his approach of now seriously underexposing that I can find but I am not surprised .

I have made up my mind as to the worth of his approaches. I do not expect a book from him that might challenge "Way Beyond Monochrome"

pentaxuser

Oldwino · Aug 3, 2021

It also seems, judging from his new website, that focusing is dead, too.

Dusty Negative · Aug 3, 2021

Don Heisz said:
No. Overexposure is when the negative has been given more exposure than recommended by the manufacturer based on the lighting. It does not mean "unacceptably dense result".
Overexposure does not necessarily generate "unacceptably dense results." If it is exactly the way you wanted it to be, you wanted it overexposed.

Don, are you saying that: if I take a spot-meter reading of the face of a very pale person, and the reading is f8 @ 1/500 (at ISO 400), and I change the exposure to f8 @ 1/125 to more accurately reflect the tone of the subject’s face, that I am overexposing the film? And, if so, then is there a difference between overexposure and exposure compensation?

Thanks. I appreciate the exchange here.

NB23 · Aug 3, 2021

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I can only say that if I had to give one single best recomendation to anyone it would be to always overexpose by 1 stop and develop normally.

Don_ih · Aug 3, 2021

Dusty Negative said:
Don, are you saying that: if I take a spot-meter reading of the face of a very pale person, and the reading is f8 @ 1/500 (at ISO 400), and I change the exposure to f8 @ 1/125 to more accurately reflect the tone of the subject’s face, that I am overexposing the film? And, if so, then is there a difference between overexposure and exposure compensation?

If your meter reading is 8 at 1/500, and it's just a reading of the pale face, then you adjust your speed to make that spot accurate in the exposure (which is probably two stops slower than 1/500 - namely, 1/125), because the meter reads to make what it's seeing middle grey (you want it dense in the negative). Is that compensation or just reading the meter correctly?

Vaughn · Aug 3, 2021

I would call that reading the meter as it measures the amount of light reflecting off a surface (or falling on the meter from the surroundings) then making exposure adjustments for the actual light and color values, film type, filter factors, bellows factors, reciprocity failure, and the planned developing regime and printing process in order to get the correct exposure...or at least what I think is the correct exposure. Of course, I might get it wrong and accidentally over or under expose the film relative to my actual needs.

To call a properly exposed negative over or under exposed is a poor and confusing choice of words in American English. If Don says a negative was over-exposed, he might mean either on purpose or accidentally, and if we can not tell by the context, then we can ask...and communication will continue fruitfully.

Moose22 · Aug 4, 2021

NB23 said:
I haven’t read the whole thread, but I can only say that if I had to give one single best recomendation to anyone it would be to always overexpose by 1 stop and develop normally.

I'm new to modern films, having taken a 20-25 year break from film. And new to scanning. Took me a while to sort it out, but I'll agree with you on this for some stocks I've used as I have very similar "rules" for myself.

For Portra and Ektar, I start +2/3 of a stop and if I miss, I miss over. (My medium format only works in whole stops). Experimented after several rolls of grainy, muddy shadows and it took many frames of bracketing to work that out, but it works for me.

I'm a neophyte, I'm not going to argue that that's the way to do it or that I'm right on anything. I mean, I got the idea when I was too dumb to read my meter correctly and accidentally overexposed a frame by a full stop. But it makes images I'm happier with, which is the only goal I really have. Maybe it's nice to know I'm not alone.

Richard Man · Aug 4, 2021

So just to bring a little closure to this since I am the OP - I don't practice this method, and for the last 2-3 years, I have been using the Bob Carnie method of double Pyro with the Jobo, usually meter at 1/2 to 1 stop under the box speed. This gives very flexible negatives for us digital post processors and works great from 35mm to 8x10. Well, for me anyway

Don_ih · Aug 4, 2021

Vaughn said:
If Don says a negative was over-exposed, he might mean either on purpose or accidentally, and if we can not tell by the context, then we can ask...and communication will continue fruitfully.

That's right, because you can overexpose a negative on purpose to get some kind of result you can only get by doing that. It's your film, your picture, you get to choose. But overexposure still means subjecting the negative to more light than recommended. It's not meaningful to say you "overexposed" if "overexpose" doesn't already mean something specific.

Doremus Scudder · Aug 4, 2021

Don Heisz said:
... It's not meaningful to say you "overexposed" if "overexpose" doesn't already mean something specific.

I like to think of correct exposure (i.e., the exposure needed to make an excellent print) as more of a range of exposures than a point. Not enough exposure and you can't make a good print. Then there's a rather large window of acceptable exposures that will allow an excellent print to be made. After a point, too much exposure affects the highlights and the grain and the resulting print quality suffers. Hit anywhere in the window and you're fine. So, my definition of "overexposure" is that which is too much for me to make an excellent print from and vice-versa.

Same with development time. Too little development to make an excellent print on a high-contrast setting is the lower limit. The upper limit is too much development to make an excellent print on the low-contrast setting. In between is a range of acceptable development times that get the job done. I have a similar definition of over- and underdevelopment as I do for exposure.

Yes, we can, and should refine that to optimize whatever it is we value in our images: grain, sharpness, edge effects, tonality, etc. That just narrows the margins somewhat thought. There's still a rather large window of both exposure and development to hit.

Best,

Doremus

Don_ih · Aug 4, 2021

Doremus Scudder said:
I like to think of correct exposure (i.e., the exposure needed to make an excellent print) as more of a range of exposures than a point. Not enough exposure and you can't make a good print.

The trick is, the correct exposure, depending on what you want and how you plan on developing, can be an overexposure. There is the "point" of ideal exposure (defined by the manufacturer or perhaps defined by your own testing) but it really is in the middle (probably closer to the left-hand side, actually) of a range of acceptable exposures, ranging from slightly underexposed to a bit more overexposed. Overexposed doesn't on its own mean "badly overexposed". But overexposed combined with overdeveloped is probably most often a mistake.

I made one of the worst overexposures of my life a few days ago. I read the wrong range on my spot meter and essentially overexposed the film by something like 8 stops. I was surprised to see the sheet of film was a big black rectangle. Took a while to figure out what I'd done.

Down Under · Aug 4, 2021

A sure-fire recipe for disaster, this. Yes, we know Ralph Gibson did it and got away with it in the 1970s and 1980s, but as I long ago worked out, the contrast and sharpness problems with overexposing and then overdeveloping are such that almost all the negatives I've made this way in my time do not give me the quality I want - they are okay (just) for 4x6 prints or posting online, but that's about it.

(This latter point may suit many darkroom workers - most photographers I know don't print larger than 5x7 anyway.)

I try to keep everything as simple as possible in the darkroom. Processing my films to a uniform standard (time-temperature) gives me the best results I want. I use three Ilford films and three developers I mix at home from raw chemistry and adjust my exposures on the borderline to give me the best possible contrast in the light conditions I'm working with while not overexposing. By "on the borderline" I mean getting just the right shadow density without blowing out the highlights. Australian light can be fickle, so this isn't always successful, altho I get the results I want about 5%-90% of the time, which is fine by me.

I like slightly thin negatives that scan easily and print best on VC grades 1.5-2.0 but again, I don't always succeed at this. To which my attitude is, oh well, so what.

The post by Michael R (#193) sums it up well for me. Aim for acceptable results but not for perfection, which one can never get anyway.

If this way fails me (as it now and then does), then I go back and reshoot. Nothing I take is so ephemeral that I cannot return and repeat it.

removed account4 · Aug 4, 2021

RalphLambrecht said:
this goes against everything I've learned and experienced in the last 50 years.

I've learned that 100% of what I learned the past 40 years in photography was only right maybe 50% of the time and wrong about 70% of the time.
nothing is true all the time especially in photography where there are so many variables its like juggling cats

Sirius Glass · Aug 5, 2021

michael_r said:
If the goal is to get the highest quality image structure for a given desired tone reproduction, I would say overexposure is to some degree subjective and dependent on metering, but also objective - although this can really only be evaluated after the fact.

If optimized image structure is not a goal (for whatever reason - maybe you want bigger grain for example, or you just don’t care), then overexposure is entirely subjective until you compromise tone the desired tone reproduction, at which point you have objectively overexposed (because you have exceeded the exposure range of the film and lost highlight detail you wanted).

As for the Zone System, it adds little value beyond attempting to help ensure you give sufficient exposure (“shadow placement” in ZS parlance) for whatever dark areas you want detail in. The rest of it doesn’t really do much except confuse people.

Film is for recording the basic information you need for whatever output you envision. Further manipulations than that in terms of exposure and development are basically wasted effort - they don’t improve the quality of the negative. The control is at the printing stage.

Edited (so you that it is clear I’m not advocating for anything less than the highest quality)

michael_r said:
Yikes, that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean that the Zone System makes better negatives but you don’t need it because acceptable is good enough. I meant that once you give sufficient exposure to record everything you want, the rest of the Zone System “controls” don’t improve anything.

Barring extreme situations requiring a little more thought and experience, a top quality negative is pretty easy to make, and the Zone System doesn’t make it better. What matters is printing technique.

The Zone System controls the amount of shadow detail. Sometimes the detail improves the photograph, but there are times it can detract from the photograph.

faberryman · Aug 5, 2021

Sirius Glass said:
The Zone System controls the amount of shadow detail. Sometimes the detail improves the photograph, but there are times it can detract from the photograph.

Are we no longer using the developer side of the equation to control highlights? I was too addle-brained to make it all the way through this 2008 thread where ic-racer laid it all out:

https://www.photrio.com/forum/threa...shadows-and-develop-for-the-highlights.36394/

Another option is to use Sunny 16, develop according to the chart that came with the film, and hope for the best.

Vaughn · Aug 5, 2021

I always develop for the highlights -- adds control for the alt processes I use, since I do not use much contrast control in the printing...

'Developing for the highlights' has been with us since the dawn of photography because as a technique, it works.

Doremus Scudder · Aug 5, 2021

michael_r said:
Yikes, that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean that the Zone System makes better negatives but you don’t need it because acceptable is good enough. I meant that once you give sufficient exposure to record everything you want, the rest of the Zone System “controls” don’t improve anything. ...

faberryman said:
Are we no longer using the developer side of the equation to control highlights? ...

michael_r said:
I would say the “develop for the highlights” part of that old adage is faulty and adds no value.

Michael,

I beg to differ -- somewhat

Certainly, with today's papers and variable contrast control, developing to tailor a negative to a certain paper grade is no longer as important, but one can still pretty easily overdevelop a contrasty to the point where even the lowest contrast setting for VC paper won't deliver a decent print (or will, but only with difficulty). And, it's still easy enough to underdevelop a flat scene to the point where the #5 filter won't get you the contrast you want. Recognizing a) what you want from the final image and b) situations where your "normal" development time just won't deliver a negative that prints well is what the "develop for the highlights" adage is about. Sure, we have a larger margin of error these days, but the advice is still relevant.

FWIW, I've had difficult negatives to print at both ends of the contrast range in the last year; one with extended development that still almost didn't give me the contrast I wanted (had to break out the #47 filter for that one) and one that need a lot of dodging and some flashing despite my (SLIMT) N-2 development scheme. If I had just developed everything "normal," I'd have never been able to make prints from either of those negatives.

I honestly believe that we're often simply trying to be too precise with the Zone System -- more precise than necessary anyway. We can certainly be a lot less finicky about exact development times. But let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. There's still a lot to be gained by developing more or less when the negative would otherwise not fall within the window of printing contrast controls.

Best,

Doremus

Bill Burk · Aug 5, 2021

michael_r said:
That's not why it has been with us since the dawn of photography.

What’s been around since the dawn of photography that doesn’t work?

Vaughn · Aug 5, 2021

Bill Burk said:
What’s been around since the dawn of photography that doesn’t work?

That's a rather personal question...

Over Expose, Over Develop

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