Pull Processing Question

I was talking to a friend of mine in about developing film, and he mentioned to me how he gets great and very printable negatives by rating HP5 at 200, overexposing by 1 stop, but then pulling 3 stops from the box speed in development. I was thinking about trying this with sheet film tonight, and was thinking about rating tmax 100 at 50iso, but then exposing at 80iso, then developing as in 25. Does any of that make any sense, or should I not bother?

Also, I guess my main question is, by what factor does one pull film. As in, with standard emulsions, I believe it is x1.5 for a stop, and TMAX is x1.33 after 2 stops, but how do I calculate how to pull 2 stops?

Cheers,

Adi

I suggest that you investigate the Zone system. Roughly speaking its about exposing for the shadows and developing for the highlights.

The box speed / ISO speed of film is based on approx 7 stops of subject brightness range from black to white.

The reason you see so much talk of using half box speed (i.e. one stop over exposure which = 1 stop pull) is that so many people follow Adams zone system methodology which is based on a 10 stop range from black to white.

But the important thing to remember is that Adams was a landscape photographer and a landscape, particularly on a bright sunny day with bright fluffy clouds and some deep shadows will have a subject brightness range of more than 7 stops. It will be closer to 10 stops. On the other hand, if you are photographing people, especially in a closed landscape (no sky) or a shaded area such as indoors, then the subject brightness range will be much less. And in fact its more likely to be 5 to 7 stops.

So the answer to your question is that it depends on what you are typically photographing. And I woulld add its better to photograph subjects which are only 5 stops or so in brightness range because you will get much better prints from them than by trying to squeeze 10 stops of subject range onto paper which only holds 7 stops anyway.

So I can't answer your question because I don't know what your typical subject brightness range is.

And note that it has been determined that the average scene is 7 stops in range. Your personal average may be different.

And getting your metering correct is more likely to give you easily printable negs.

Here's a graph of the curve family for TMAX 100 at different development times.

So, if you get results like me (if these times are relevant to the way you process film, like they work for me)...

Then you are basically talking about developing for about 8 minutes in D-76 1:1 and losing a little speed in the bargain.

I get a speed rating of between 50 and 64 for TMAX 100 when I develop for 8 minutes.



Your plan should work very well

RobC, I forgot to mention that I'll be shooting photographs at night of streets here in NYC. Because of the light pollution, I was going to use a Lee no 11 yellow green filter to cut down the luminescence of the street lamps. Since I intend on simply contact printing the negatives, I'm looking to get the contrast of the image as close to perfect on the negative itself.

What I'm concerned about, is losing detail in both the shadows and the highlights. Having scouted the locations I intend on shooting, I think the 5 stop range is too condensed to capture the scene. I guess my next question is, if I meter for my shadows and shift down the exposure from the metered Zone V to the recommended Zone III, how do I determine how to compensate in development? For instance, if I metered at f/16 and brought it to f/8 for the shadows, how do I compensate for developing? Or am I thinking of this all wrong?

Thanks for all the help!!

Mister Sith said:

I was talking to a friend of mine in about developing film, and he mentioned to me how he gets great and very printable negatives by rating HP5 at 200, overexposing by 1 stop, but then pulling 3 stops from the box speed in development. I was thinking about trying this with sheet film tonight, and was thinking about rating tmax 100 at 50iso, but then exposing at 80iso, then developing as in 25. Does any of that make any sense, or should I not bother?

Also, I guess my main question is, by what factor does one pull film. As in, with standard emulsions, I believe it is x1.5 for a stop, and TMAX is x1.33 after 2 stops, but how do I calculate how to pull 2 stops?

Cheers,

Adi

Click to expand...

Development times should be adjusted to match the paper and enlarger on which you will be printing.

If shooting at night then metering is a different ball game. Night scenes are very often high contrast subjects with street lights and dark shadows.

I strongly recommend you meter on a highlight, something you want to just retain full textural detail in and preferably with a spot meter. With standard box speed I would meter the highlight and open up 2 stops from there. So if you metered 1/30 @F11 then use 1/30 @F5.6.

Don't worry about the shadows, they will be fine. Only if you find that shadows are consistently too dark should you consider firstly opening up 3 stops instead of 2 or pulling the film.

Night shots should look like night. If you meter the shadows two bad things will happen. Firstly you will tend to over expose them and secondly if the shadow is into reciprocity and you try and correct for it, you will blow the highlights completely. It is the highlighlights and mid tones which are most important by far so concentrate on them.

Try it the way I'm suggesting and I think you will be surprised. Only if its really not working out should you try and pull the film to soften its contrast.

Mister Sith said:

I guess my main question is, by what factor does one pull film.

Click to expand...

Experimentation is good, press ahead but don't use an important negative for this. It is good to see what various techniques will do for you.

Ok...

Question 1, should you take other people's prescription medicines? :confused:

Now with photos following others advice generally won't make you sick.

But, if you want your stuff to look like Adams work, study Adams; if Karsh is more your style, study Karsh; if you want your stuff to look like your buddies work, then...

You do need to understand though that there is a lot your buddy is not telling you, maybe a lot that he doesn't even realize that he's doing.

YMMV

Question 2, what kind of paper are you using?
Question 3, what problem are you having now?

Pulling (or pushing) development, also known as minus (or plus) development, is used to "fit" the content in "your scene" into the printable range of "your paper".

If you are using VC paper that's a moving target. Minus film development may mean that you just end up adjusting the paper grade "the other way" to get it to look the way you like.

Pulling only saves you work (less burn and dodge) if you can live with "flatter" overall contrast in the print. (From where you are now.)

Question 4, are you having an issue with your shadows?

Adjusting EI to a lower number just gets darker subjects in "your scene" onto the negative, it doesn't mean that they will actually print, heck you may not even want that detail.

There are lots of things to consider... answering these questions is a start.

I've no idea what colour your local streetlamps are, but in case they are sodium based (ie.orange, with a very incomplete spectrum) then using a greenish filter will enormously reduce the light available to the film.

However, your phrasing is ambiguous, so perhaps you want to reduce the streetlight illumination compared to the effect of another light-source, such as 'white' light from shop windows and so on -- this sounds a bit optimistic but interesting, with lots of testing! You will have to work out whether your lightmeter reacts to the sodium illumination in the same way as the 'white' light, and how to remove that effect from your result. Meter through the green filter? Does your lightmeter do that successfully? Test in a 'white' light environment and see if the filter-factor agrees with the measured results, with and without the filter.

If I read it correctly, you are also asking if it is usual to overexpose by one stop and under-develop by three stops? Probably the answer is 'not really'. Your night scene most likely has large areas of relative darkness already and by under-developing this much you will cause less printable image in your shadow areas. You would be better off carefully metering the highlights (whether you use your green filtration or not) and then seeing what, if anything, you want to change when you have printed the negs.

(Edited as I posted it before finishing, accidentally).

So I tried it out, and while wandering around with a non-photographer friend of mine at 4:30am, setting up this photo, the zone system finally clicked for me. I was metering the scene, and took a digital proof shot to see if the light was in fact falling as I believed it to. I was explaining what I was doing to him, and then *click* I finally understood.

I decided to forgo the yellow-green filter and stick with straight exposures as not to overly complicate things. At the end of the day, I have a while to experiment, but I needed to shoot useable exposures for a final of mine at school. I decided to simply rate the film at 50ISO and develop for 50 Iso with slight over development (+1 minute) in a 1+75 dilution of Rodinal.

Please excuse the horrible photo of a direct contact print on warmtone FB paper. I'll be burning in the highlight on the bottom right corner just to bring in the detail. I'm also looking into selenium toning the final print, but my school doesn't allow toning in the facilities.

Cool. Staying very close to normal worked pretty good it looks like.

Couple thoughts,

Skipping the extra minute might have eliminated the need to burn in the highlights. Maybe try a slightly softer paper grade with this negative..

With regard to ZS metering, glad you got it. Just understand that it's a guide, an estimation not an absolute. There are lots of variables, in the real world it's not as exact as one might think, but it will get you in the ball park.