Reducing overexposed negatives

[BetterSense]

I have a negative that is about 6 stops overexposed. I pulled development significantly since I develop by inspection, but the negative is very dense. Is it worthwhile to use farmer's reducer and reduce the negative?

 

[keithwms]

Did you try printing it yet?

Reducer will work but definitely make sure that it's necessary first!

 

[naugastyle]

I would try printing first, too. I had a roll of Tri-x in my Trip 35 that I had planned to push to 3200 based on the majority of the roll, but on a bright sunny day didn't feel like wasting it. I stopped down to f/22 but the shutter is automatically set at 1/40 so...yeah, very overexposed. When I printed the contact sheet all the sun frames were nearly white. But when I printed a frame individually it was fine, just took some extra time.

 

[BetterSense]

I have printed it and it comes out very flat and grainy, rather unnattractive. I am prepared to sacrifice it if improvement could be had, because it's unacceptable the way it is.

 

[keithwms]

Reduce away, then! It's not hard. Sounds like you want a slightly non-proportional potion.

 

[BetterSense]

Sounds like you want a slightly non-proportional potion.

What does that mean? I mixed up some Formulary farmer's reducer, diluted it with water and treated the neg till the density looked more reasonable. I haven't tried to print it, but it looks really low contrast now.

 

[keithwms]

That's the thing, when you reduce, you can do it proportionally or nonproportionally. Did you see any words to that effect on the Farmer's package? I don't remember the instructions but you could look it up.

When you overexposed, you basically had shoved all the tones up the knee, clumping them together in terms of density in the neg. If you then bleach back proportionally, the bleach will reduce the highlights and the shadows in (approximately) the same proportion, and you'll not improve contrast- the neg will be thinner overall and wil print faster... but not necessarily any easier to print with the contrast you desire. If you do a nonproportional reduction, you'll likely build in better contrast and the neg will be easier to print.

You can't expect miracles of course, you clumped the tones by overexposing, and now you have to do things like bleach nonproportionally and maybe also selectively, print at high contrast grade, dodge and burn, maybe Se tone, and do a little dance to try to make your neg more easily printable.

I'd say now print it at grades 3-5 and see what grabs you. Don't forget, you could also now deliberately overexpose the print and bleach back, that'll give you some better highlight sep. Bottom line: you have many more options for improving the print than you do improving the neg- I'd just aim to get the neg basically printable and then let multigrade technology work for you

I am sure others will offer different advice...

 

[keithwms]

P.S., here you go,consult Anchell...

 

[BetterSense]

Does selenium intensification increase negative contrast?

 

[keithwms]

Well Se affects areas with established silver density, so yes. You'd mostly see that effect in a very thin neg... in that case the thinnest protions would be virtually unchanged by the Se, while the thicker parts would get a bit more density.... the net effect being more contrast.

Combining reduction with Se sounds like a recipe for confusion though, to me. Again, remember there are all sorts of things you can do in the print phase. And it wasn't that long ago that people didn't have multigrade papers and were still able to control contrast quite well.

P.S. I don't think it is strictly correct to use the term 'intensification' to describe what Se does. I think of the intensifiers as acting more or less equally on thick and thin portions. Se really acts mostly on highlights, in my experience. Gives you more highlight sep, more highlight 'brilliance' a bit more separated from the midtones.

 

[Jon Shiu]

I've printed overexposed negatives before for someone. Had print times in the 5 min. range and needed to split grade between g4.5 and 5. The prints came out good.

Jon

 

[clayne]

P.S. I don't think it is strictly correct to use the term 'intensification' to describe what Se does. I think of the intensifiers as acting more or less equally on thick and thin portions. Se really acts mostly on highlights, in my experience. Gives you more highlight sep, more highlight 'brilliance' a bit more separated from the midtones.

Keith's description is pretty dead-on. It definitely increases the contrast - but it does impart a pleasing edge to the highlights. It's no silver bullet though.

I've printed overexposed negatives before for someone. Had print times in the 5 min. range and needed to split grade between g4.5 and 5. The prints came out good.

A great testament to film at that.

 

[Vaughn]

...Combining reduction with Se sounds like a recipe for confusion though, to me...

I have done this a couple times with success to bump up the contrast for carbon printing -- slight bleaching to reduce the shadows, wash, and follow with Selenium toning to move the highlights up. But I'd rather get the negs right the first time!

Vaughn

 

[keithwms]

A great testament to film at that.

No kidding!

Bettersense, I once massively overexposed a shot because of forgetting to put an IR filter in place. The exposure factor was something crazy like 8-10 stops. I took several shots that way... and blindly developed them normally.

Let's see, here it is. Just a neg scan, I can't find the print. But I did nothing to the neg, no bleaching, no anything. It is pretty much black to the eye. I am not joking, it is black. Totally on whim I threw it on my scanner and was completely surprised at how much detail there was.. in, what, a 0.1-0.3 density range?!!!

Ah film! If you are a competent photographer, it will amaze you. If you are an incompetent photographer, it will amaze you even more