Portraiture - Pushing Tri-X (TXP) 320 in Rodinal - To The Limits!

[gainer]

The characteristic curves of TX400 and TXP320 are quite different, the first being pretty straight all the way up, the second having a low contrast in the shadows sweeping up to a high slope in the highlights. It was tailored (I don't know how) to be that way because by and large too much shadow detail in a portrait tends to be distracting. This characteristic may make TXP good for certain landscapes, not good for others.

I had to have a lot of experience at life before my daddy stopped telling me what to do and started telling me "You should have known better." After 70 years or so of playing more or less seriously with photography, there are still times when I tell myself "You should have known better" but I still bristle when someone else says it. Better we should cast facts and opinions about reported facts than cast aspersions at another's intellectual powers.

 

[Roger Hicks]

What does any of this actually mean?

A skin tone, in a normal negative, is a light mid tone.

Under-expose, and over-develop like fury, and you may well get a very nice skin tone in the realms normally reserved for 'the darkest tone with texture and detail' or indeed less.

This is the basis of surveillance photography and (perhaps more importantly) the basis of Mortensen's minimum exposure/gamma infinity portrait technique.

Or have I not read the thread carefully enough?

Cheers,

R.