Pushing large format for handheld

I've been working for some time now at night. Usually my exposures for landscapes are in the realm of 5 minutes.

I have been able to get some lucky shots on 35mm with a 1.8 lens at like 1/60 depending on the conditions.

I was hoping maybe someone here had experience pushing 4x5 film with reasonable success. Id like to see what pushed 4x5 film looks like to see if the contrast is too much.

Basically looking to have an open discussion on exposure for pushing tri-x 320 3-4 stops. I believe it's possible to get good results but haven't tried it myself and the testing phase can be quite expensive so if anyone has advice it might save me some time and money.



Sent from my LG-H811 using Tapatalk

The answer depends very much on what you are photographing. If the subjects has lights in it then you will already have a high contrast subject. Pushing that will make it worse.

But as in a recent topic, often night time scenes with with lights don't require reciprocity correction so pushing film speed and dev could work if you meter for highlights. But you should expect shadows to be very dark.

On the other hand, if your night time subjects don't have lights and are low contrast, then pushing should work just fine.

So it all depends on the subject contrast range.

Low SBR = good for pushing
Normal SBR = marginal for pushing
High SBR = bad for pushing

of course this is a generalisation becasue if you must push to get the shot steady then you must push and accept the possible very high neg contrast.

Then you can start considering development to control the neg contrast and that opens up a whole new barrel of worms. Compensating developers with push processing ??? Stand developement ??? etc etc. Its not something I have ever tried.

hi grokglock

have you done a quick search in the apug archives ?
you are in good company, lots of peopel have asked about pushing tri x !
i just typed in " pushing tri x " and found this
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

i have experience pushing tri x a little bit, but not a ton, i don't use fancy developers as mentioned by the people who do it often (( in the threads linked to)) ...
pushing 1 stop is the same as developing normally ... if i go beyond that, i increase my development time by 40% for each stop over in whatever developer i am using
i use caffenol C with a tiny bit of dektol in it, and dektol 1:8 ... normally i would process 4 mins in dektol then 4 mins in the coffee, if i pushed 4 stops i would add another 4 mins 50 seconds to each step
( 3 x 40% ).
you probably don't use caffenol or dektol, do i would go by what is listed in the threads i linked to.

good luck !

I would add that if you are using 5 mins exposure now and want to use 1/30 second I think that is a 13 stop push and that sounds like fanatsy to me.

But if that 5 mins is after a reciprocity correction then maybe its not a 13 stop push. If you can get exposure to something reasonable, say 1/8 second before push then maybe you're in with a chance.

But also note that handholding a 4x5 I rekon you'll need at least 1/125 if not 1/500 to keep it still.

f1.8 lenses aren't very common for LF cameras, they were made though

Find yourself a fast lens like a 150mm f2.8 Xenotar, or one of the faster Tessars, there's also fast Dallmeyer and TTH Cooke lenses but these aren't usually in shutters and were used on press reflex cameras.

Ian

also if the probability is that you just won't be able to hold camera perfectly still then it makes no sense to use 4x5 hand held. There's no advantage to neg size if there is movement and a smaller format can be held still.

Modern Tri-X and HP5+ were specifically designed for pushing, give it a try. Format shouldn't matter.

Last time i tried HP5 at 1600 on an overcast day, late afternoon (5pm?), results were very good. This was in 6x6 format, but no reason for this not to work on larger formats.

As for faster lenses, i think the very narrow DOF limits this possibility.

RobC said:

also if the probability is that you just won't be able to hold camera perfectly still then it makes no sense to use 4x5 hand held. There's no advantage to neg size if there is movement and a smaller format can be held still.

Click to expand...

naaah
i have done a 45 second handheld exposure with a graflex slr in a rain storm,
it came out just fine

ymmv

jnanian said:

ymmv

Click to expand...

I think I can fairly confidently say it will.