Restrainer: Combating the flat highlights of pyro + MG paper

[koraks]

Why do staining developers cause problems with VC papers?

As @MsLing implies above, the stain tends to have a higher density as the wavelength of the light gets shorter. In other words: pyro stain is more dense to blue light than to green light. This means that image-wise pyro stain will block blue light more so than green light, which means that VC paper will effectively print at a higher grade in the shadows (less image and stain density in the negative) than in the highlights (more stain density) of the print.

Whether this is an advantage or a drawback depends on your preferences and your point of view. Some consider it a benefit since it results in highlight compression, which can help retaining tone in highlight areas. The penalty is that this tone doesn't come with a lot of contrast, so while a highlight may not blow out into paper white, it may render as an undifferentiated light tone. Again, it all depends on what you want to achieve in a print - and subject matter plays a role, too.

The suggestion of @Augustus Caesar that pyro developers are by definition problematic when printing VC evidently lacks nuance and I wouldn't agree with it. It all depends, as shown above.

 

[khh]

If you haven't already, you could also try Foma's graded papers (FOMABROM and RETROBROM) to see if any of them might give you the kind of results you're looking for.

 

[pentaxuser]

Thanks MsLing and koraks for the explanation It was the fairly "absolute " nature of Augustus Caesar's statement that worried me If the problems were that bad I'd expect the users of staining developers to have mentioned this if it was a serious disadvantage and I could not recall ever hearing such a statement

pentaxuser

 

[Lachlan Young]

Foma's graded papers (FOMABROM and RETROBROM)

Fomabrom C is probably the best starting point for the negs described , Retrobrom is a pretty soft G2 (1.5 even), and the base colour is a bit weird for some. Fomabrom can be persuaded a bit warmer in emulsion colour, and is a lot faster than MGWT (for the unwary).

 

[DREW WILEY]

Staining pyro developers DO NOT interfere with VC paper performance. They make highlight reproduction easier in that case just like they do with actual graded papers. The specifics of this can get a bit complicated to explain because different formulas can produce somewhat different hued stains; some are rather yellow-green, others more brownish. Some films stain more than others. And not all VC papers respond the same either. But in real-world printing, one learns pretty fast by just doing it.

 

[Jarin Blaschke]

As @MsLing implies above, the stain tends to have a higher density as the wavelength of the light gets shorter. In other words: pyro stain is more dense to blue light than to green light. This means that image-wise pyro stain will block blue light more so than green light, which means that VC paper will effectively print at a higher grade in the shadows (less image and stain density in the negative) than in the highlights (more stain density) of the print.

Whether this is an advantage or a drawback depends on your preferences and your point of view. Some consider it a benefit since it results in highlight compression, which can help retaining tone in highlight areas. The penalty is that this tone doesn't come with a lot of contrast, so while a highlight may not blow out into paper white, it may render as an undifferentiated light tone. Again, it all depends on what you want to achieve in a print - and subject matter plays a role, too.

The suggestion of @Augustus Caesar that pyro developers are by definition problematic when printing VC evidently lacks nuance and I wouldn't agree with it. It all depends, as shown above.

I agree, the compensation in the highlights is a “look” and a question of personal taste rather than a problem. Personally I need to print more images before I can decide where I stand with that look.

It seems that more restrainer will help a little bit, but will never match the curve of a graded paper. Maybe Split grade printing could be another tool?

 

[Jarin Blaschke]

Fomabrom C is probably the best starting point for the negs described , Retrobrom is a pretty soft G2 (1.5 even), and the base colour is a bit weird for some. Fomabrom can be persuaded a bit warmer in emulsion colour, and is a lot faster than MGWT (for the unwary).

Testing Galerie versus Lodima and Lupex some years ago (chronicled here) is what committed me to chloride papers. There was no comparison. Galerie showed much less detail, looked much less dimensional and had weak blacks next to Lodima. It almost looked like a newspaper reproduction by comparison. That was the last time I used a fast and presumably bromide-leading paper.

 

[koraks]

Maybe Split grade printing could be another tool?

In conjunction with localized burning and/or dodging, yes, certainly.

 

[Jarin Blaschke]

Staining pyro developers DO NOT interfere with VC paper performance. They make highlight reproduction easier in that case just like they do with actual graded papers. The specifics of this can get a bit complicated to explain because different formulas can produce somewhat different hued stains; some are rather yellow-green, others more brownish. Some films stain more than others. And not all VC papers respond the same either. But in real-world printing, one learns pretty fast by just doing it.

I actually tested a tiny sample of Bergger warm tone alongside MGWT. It flattened the highlights even more than the Ilford, so I didn’t pursue further that day.

 

[DREW WILEY]

With Bergger, the shadows drop into blackness a little faster. So if you try to boost you shadow gradation on the paper curve, you might encounter more resistance crisply printing the highlights. It all depends on your specific neg of course. There are several variables at work. And sometimes one needs to dig a little deeper into their tool kit to find an ideal solution. The way I can have my cake and eat it too potentially involves supplementary masking.

I have worked with a variety of staining pyro formulas, but never WD2D+, so can't make a valid comparison with that. But if you're trying to equate relatively bold VC projection papers results from MGWT and Berrger to lower-contrast contact graded printing papers, well, then the highlights are going to respond differently. I don't contact print all that often, but when I do, use
MGWT. I distinctly prefer the results over Azo; and if I need equal delicate mid and upper tonality, just attach an appropriate contrast mask (which can be either contrast-minus or contrast-plus). I'm well equipped to precisely do that. Masking is a highly versatile tool set of its own, but requires experience as well as appropriate punch and registration gear to do well.

 

[Augustus Caesar]

Thanks MsLing and koraks for the explanation It was the fairly "absolute " nature of Augustus Caesar's statement that worried me If the problems were that bad I'd expect the users of staining developers to have mentioned this if it was a serious disadvantage and I could not recall ever hearing such a statement

pentaxuser

I mean simply that because staining developers produce a colored stain rather than a pure silver deposit, the results can be unpredictable, because the stain is not equivalent to silver density. This doesn't matter to graded papers, which are not sensitized to green, so if one is going to use VC papers, it would be advisable to use non-staining developers. Changes in the paper may affect results, too. Multigrade was revised just a few years ago.

 

[Keith Tapscott.]

Yes, I guess I am.

One of my life’s ambitions is to shoot a black and white motion picture developed in replenishable pyrogallol. I have someone on it now, will take some years to sort out the formula, if ever, I’m sure.

I have a formula somewhere for Ilford ID6 developer and ID6R replenisher which is a Pyrogallol, Metol and Hydroquinone process.
Whether or not it is suitable for cinematography I don't know.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Testing Galerie versus Lodima and Lupex some years ago (chronicled here) is what committed me to chloride papers. There was no comparison. Galerie showed much less detail, looked much less dimensional and had weak blacks next to Lodima. It almost looked like a newspaper reproduction by comparison. That was the last time I used a fast and presumably bromide-leading paper.

A great deal more of that has to do with curve shape (and crystal characteristcs etc) than specific formulation. With today's technology a very fast very high chloride content paper is entirely feasible, and as a matter of fact is the basis for modern RA-4 papers.

Having used the papers in question, I can see why you didn't have a good experience with Galerie - it has enough curve shape difference, grade for grade, to MGWT that you could draw certain assumptions from that (just as Michael A. Smith seems to have drawn a whole sequence of errant assumptions from the significant mismatches between Kodabromide and Azo - which will have been exacerbated by the problems of emulsion changes for environmental reasons running ahead of the technology in the 1970s in what was then very much a cinderella sector of the market). The various contact speed papers with very high chloride content (Azo, Lupex, Fomalux - which was one of the other grades of Lodima, etc) have curves that plot very remarkably closely to MGWT - as do the two grades of Fomabrom. Retrobrom plots round about where a G1 Azo-type might wind up - just a lot faster. It's a great paper, just not necessarily on a base colour that people may want. For whatever reason, the shape of curve of the Azo type emulsions seems to deliver visual characteristics that people like - but they aren't the only route to that end.

I think one of the other things that is being underestimated here is that the contrast differences between grades of Azo/ Lupex type papers can have something to do with the surfactants used in coating (i.e. if they have development accelerating effects due to affecting gelatin swell) - along with the use of small amounts of very powerful restrainers (PMT). Modifying some developers with a specific molecular weight of a polyglycol might (or might not) work. There are also better developers than Amidol, but they do require a little bit of digging to find relevant information (and the real answers as to why you ideally don't want 1 min+ dev times in chloride contact papers), along with some experimentation.

I have a formula somewhere for Ilford ID6 developer and ID6R replenisher which is a Pyrogallol, Metol and Hydroquinone process.

You might want to ask yourself this: why did Ilford leave all these behind when they got PQ to work; and why did the rest of the industry rather quickly fall in behind Ilford's lead on that? It wasn't because of an anti-aesthetic conspiracy.

 

[Don_ih]

If I was having trouble getting highlights bright in MG paper, I'd switch to a phenidone-based paper developer that used benzo as the restrainer (no potassium bromide). It would cool the tone, though. I'd stay away from metol.

 

[pentaxuser]

I mean simply that because staining developers produce a colored stain rather than a pure silver deposit, the results can be unpredictable, because the stain is not equivalent to silver density. This doesn't matter to graded papers, which are not sensitized to green, so if one is going to use VC papers, it would be advisable to use non-staining developers. Changes in the paper may affect results, too. Multigrade was revised just a few years ago.

OK and thanks Augustus. Mind you I can't recall any darkroom printer who uses staining developers saying that their print results were unpredictable either

pentaxuser

 

[Keith Tapscott.]

You might want to ask yourself this: why did Ilford leave all these behind when they got PQ to work; and why did the rest of the industry rather quickly fall in behind Ilford's lead on that? It wasn't because of an anti-aesthetic conspiracy.

I agree that a carefully designed PQ developer is perfectly suitable for the task. However, Jarin wants to use a replenishable developer that employs Pyrogallol as a reducing agent hence my suggestion of the Ilford ID-6 formula.
As I already pointed out, I don't know if it is suitable for cinematography

I don't personally use staining developers, but I do know some photographers who do.

 

[Jarin Blaschke]

A great deal more of that has to do with curve shape (and crystal characteristcs etc) than specific formulation. With today's technology a very fast very high chloride content paper is entirely feasible, and as a matter of fact is the basis for modern RA-4 papers.

Having used the papers in question, I can see why you didn't have a good experience with Galerie - it has enough curve shape difference, grade for grade, to MGWT that you could draw certain assumptions from that (just as Michael A. Smith seems to have drawn a whole sequence of errant assumptions from the significant mismatches between Kodabromide and Azo - which will have been exacerbated by the problems of emulsion changes for environmental reasons running ahead of the technology in the 1970s in what was then very much a cinderella sector of the market). The various contact speed papers with very high chloride content (Azo, Lupex, Fomalux - which was one of the other grades of Lodima, etc) have curves that plot very remarkably closely to MGWT - as do the two grades of Fomabrom. Retrobrom plots round about where a G1 Azo-type might wind up - just a lot faster. It's a great paper, just not necessarily on a base colour that people may want. For whatever reason, the shape of curve of the Azo type emulsions seems to deliver visual characteristics that people like - but they aren't the only route to that end.

I think one of the other things that is being underestimated here is that the contrast differences between grades of Azo/ Lupex type papers can have something to do with the surfactants used in coating (i.e. if they have development accelerating effects due to affecting gelatin swell) - along with the use of small amounts of very powerful restrainers (PMT). Modifying some developers with a specific molecular weight of a polyglycol might (or might not) work. There are also better developers than Amidol, but they do require a little bit of digging to find relevant information (and the real answers as to why you ideally don't want 1 min+ dev times in chloride contact papers), along with some experimentation.



You might want to ask yourself this: why did Ilford leave all these behind when they got PQ to work; and why did the rest of the industry rather quickly fall in behind Ilford's lead on that? It wasn't because of an anti-aesthetic conspiracy.

At the time I did the comparison test, Galerie was actually my usual paper and I had never used MGWT. Lodima G4 and Galerie G3 were not that different in contrast. But the sharpness and "dimensionality" of the Chloride paper led me to walk away from Galerie forever.

What would curve shape have to do with sharpness and resolution?

 

[DREW WILEY]

I wouldn't blame the paper. I've gotten excellent "sharpness and dimensionalty" with Galerie Graded with the right negatives, my personal amidol formula, and full paper development to DMax completion. But the percent of out of the ballpark home run prints from Galerie were noticably fewer than with other classic graded papers like Oriental Seagull G and Brilliant Bromide, and less than premium VC papers like Polygrade V, Kentmere Fineprint, and MGWT. But other than the MGWT, all of this is paleontology talk by now.

I'd have to literally look at your negatives to see why you had trouble with that particular combination. It's academic at this point in time anyway because Galerie has gone the way of the other dinosaurs. But did you ever tell us yet what specific film or films were involved? It's the combination of the film curves involved, not just that of the paper.

And if you're using a stained neg in relation to a graded blue-sensitive printing paper, you can look at the neg through a blue filter and get a better approximation of how the highlights might respond.

 

[Milpool]

Tone reproduction/curve shape could potentially make a print subjectively appear sharper on one paper than another even if total contrast is the same because the shape of the curve determines the contrast of different parts of the exposure scale (darks, midtones, highlights).

In general given a particular negative/image the tone reproduction (ie paper contrast, curve shape, D-Max/D-Min) and surface characteristics, combined with what we are conditioned to expect to see can all influence the subjective perception of print quality.

While a slow chloride emulsion like Azo/Lodima/Lupex would tend to technically be finer grained and higher resolution than an enlarging paper like Galerie, realistically there can’t really be a visible difference in the sharpness (acutance, edge effects, resolution, MTF) of different paper emulsions as we are never looking at an enlargement of the paper emulsion. Without a magnification factor these image structure characteristics are just too small to see.

At the time I did the comparison test, Galerie was actually my usual paper and I had never used MGWT. Lodima G4 and Galerie G3 were not that different in contrast. But the sharpness and "dimensionality" of the Chloride paper led me to walk away from Galerie forever.

What would curve shape have to do with sharpness and resolution?

 

[john_s]

I mean simply that because staining developers produce a colored stain rather than a pure silver deposit, the results can be unpredictable, because the stain is not equivalent to silver density. This doesn't matter to graded papers, which are not sensitized to green, so if one is going to use VC papers, it would be advisable to use non-staining developers. Changes in the paper may affect results, too. Multigrade was revised just a few years ago.

The masking effect of the stain on highlights with VC paper varies widely. There is an example in Barry Thornton's later book, showing the same beach scene using a PMK neg on VC paper beside one on conventionally developed neg and same paper (iirc, or was it the same neg on graded paper). The print contrast was identical except for highlights which in the PMK/VC example were very flat, and unattractive.

My PMK negs were never as green as those I've seen on the web, and my scenes never suffered to anything like the same extent. But it would depend on the subject matter. The stain of Pyrocat is not green and the effect of the stain on VC papers is less.

 

[Andrew O'Neill]

I never saw highlight flattening on VC papers with pyrocat-HD developed film (HP5, FP4, TMY-2), when I was heavily into VC papers (Ilford MG, Forte Polygrade V, mainly). I did see it with Rollo Pyro (rotary version of PMK), and stopped using it because of that. I put it down to the different colour of the stain. Rollo is greeny yellow, Pyrocat-HD is yellowy brown. I have printed on Pyrocat-HD negatives on Lodima (grade 3, first batch they came out with), and was blown away.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Tone reproduction/curve shape could potentially make a print subjectively appear sharper on one paper than another even if total contrast is the same because the shape of the curve determines the contrast of different parts of the exposure scale (darks, midtones, highlights).

In general given a particular negative/image the tone reproduction (ie paper contrast, curve shape, D-Max/D-Min) and surface characteristics, combined with what we are conditioned to expect to see can all influence the subjective perception of print quality.

While a slow chloride emulsion like Azo/Lodima/Lupex would tend to technically be finer grained and higher resolution than an enlarging paper like Galerie, realistically there can’t really be a visible difference in the sharpness (acutance, edge effects, resolution, MTF) of different paper emulsions as we are never looking at an enlargement of the paper emulsion. Without a magnification factor these image structure characteristics are just too small to see.

Exactly - I think it may be as simple as the chloride papers having a sharper shoulder than Galerie, grade-for-grade - with the knock-on impacts across the perceptual character of the material that you have summarised. Which is not a total surprise given the potentially very high monodispersity of high chloride emulsions (and similar crystal structure characteristics being preferentially designed-in to the more sophisticated emulsions used in modern variable-contrast papers to enable a real G5) enabling more optimal curve shape characteristics in the era before ultra tight control of crystal growth/ form was possible.

 

[Lachlan Young]

I agree that a carefully designed PQ developer is perfectly suitable for the task. However, Jarin wants to use a replenishable developer that employs Pyrogallol as a reducing agent hence my suggestion of the Ilford ID-6 formula.
As I already pointed out, I don't know if it is suitable for cinematography

I don't personally use staining developers, but I do know some photographers who do.

The point I am making is that the stain doesn't actually matter very much (and more often causes problems) - and the characteristics that do matter can be achieved by more controllable, easily replenishable and less toxic means. Development inhibition effects are what are desired (they improve highlight density control, sharpness etc), but as much as they can improve MTF, too much of an MTF boost can also cause problems if there are multiple contact/ optical duplication steps involved if the rest of the system can't be modified to cope.

 

[Milpool]

Curious to see the formula. I assume it wasn’t a staining/tanning developer.

I have a formula somewhere for Ilford ID6 developer and ID6R replenisher which is a Pyrogallol, Metol and Hydroquinone process.
Whether or not it is suitable for cinematography I don't know.

 

[Keith Tapscott.]

Curious to see the formula. I assume it wasn’t a staining/tanning developer.

I don't know if it a staining developer or not.
I'm happy with D76 for my own film processing.
I use Multigrade papers and Multigrade developer for printing.