Snowstorm.

mporter012 · Feb 11, 2015

You are photographing some pine trees in a heavy snowstorm, shooting tri-x at 200. How do you develop?

Rick A · Feb 11, 2015

Normally.

BrianShaw · Feb 11, 2015

But don't meter/expose "normally"

cliveh · Feb 11, 2015

Rick A said:
Normally.

+1

bsdunek · Feb 11, 2015

As BrianShaw says, don't meter "normally". The meter is seeing all that white snow and will try to make it 18% gray. You have to open up a couple of stops the 'whiten' it up. If you use Ansel's Zone System, put it on Zone 8.

mporter012 · Feb 11, 2015

bsdunek said:
As BrianShaw says, don't meter "normally". The meter is seeing all that white snow and will try to make it 18% gray. You have to open up a couple of stops the 'whiten' it up. If you use Ansel's Zone System, put it on Zone 8.

I just have several rolls of tr-x sitting around from this year that i've yet to develop and I'm wondering how they will turn out.

I probably underexposed slightly. I had cut the film speed in half, and then over-exposed by 1 stop. I'm thinking the tree's were probably zone 1 (just distant black shapes really) and the snow was zone 7-ish (it was really cloudy and snowing hard), so with my meter reading the whole thing as zone 5, by opening up 2 stops, i may be ok. We'll see!

By adding some developing time, I should be able to move the highlights (snow) up a zone correct?

Being that the landscape is winning out in my photographic pursuits, I should, at a minimum gets an incident meter, and probably a spot meter, so i can really specify my exposures.

Mark

Sirius Glass · Feb 11, 2015

Use an incedent light meter
Develop with developer and then use stop bath, then hypo, wash, PhotoFlo, dry

DREW WILEY · Feb 11, 2015

Strictly speaking, Zone VIII would traditionally be interpreted as three stops above middle gray and blank white. You want that reserved for
sparkly specular highlights, not metered snow, which would top out at VII. Of course, most black and white films forgive you a bit up there
toward the top, so correct shadow placement and development is actually more important. Spotmeters make life easy - as long as your battery doesn't freeze first! I learned that the hard way long ago snow camping. Keep the meter in your sleeping bag at night.

benjiboy · Feb 11, 2015

Use an incident light meter and open up a half a stop from the reading given and develop normally.

BrianShaw · Feb 11, 2015

mporter012 said:
...
Being that the landscape is winning out in my photographic pursuits, I should, at a minimum gets an incident meter, and probably a spot meter, so i can really specify my exposures.

Mark

You probably benefit greatly from that.

cliveh · Feb 11, 2015

mporter012 said:
You are photographing some pine trees in a heavy snowstorm, shooting tri-x at 200. How do you develop?

The OP is asking how do you develop.

amellice · Feb 11, 2015

Can everyone please explain the reason behind his suggestion?

Also OP what kind of shadows do you have in the scene? do you want to preserve them? If you want to show details in the pine trees I'd say put them at zone III and open half stop more and give it N-1 to preserve the snow which will most probably will be on IX or X

cliveh · Feb 11, 2015

amellice said:
Can everyone please explain the reason behind his suggestion?

Also OP what kind of shadows do you have in the scene? do you want to preserve them? If you want to show details in the pine trees I'd say put them at zone III and open half stop more and give it N-1 to preserve the snow which will most probably will be on IX or X

How can you justify such advice without seeing the original scene?

amellice · Feb 11, 2015

cliveh said:
How can you justify such advice without seeing the original scene?

That's why I said "If you want to show details in the pine trees" and judging that the dynamic range will be high from shadows in the trees and white of the snow

removed account4 · Feb 11, 2015

mporter012 said:
You are photographing some pine trees in a heavy snowstorm, shooting tri-x at 200. How do you develop?

it depends on how the film was exposed.
but i would develop it normally ... whatever that means to you ...

(i hope you bracketed a little bit )

mporter012 · Feb 11, 2015

Just getting feedback. I keep enough notes on exposure and development, I can compensate next time out, if need be.

wildbill · Feb 11, 2015

Since the subject to brightness range in snowy conditions (winter) is lower then a sunny summer day in the mtns, I almost always develop N+1.
I'm right, everyone else is wrong

mporter012 · Feb 11, 2015

wildbill said:
Since the subject to brightness range in snowy conditions (winter) is lower then a sunny summer day in the mtns, I almost always develop N+1.
I'm right, everyone else is wrong

That's actually what I do! Michael Kenna develops everything at 11.5 minutes in D76, so just do that, and all your photos will look like his

hsteeves · Feb 11, 2015

personally, I think you are going to end up with some very dense negatives.

Arklatexian · Feb 12, 2015

Snowstorm

amellice said:
That's why I said "If you want to show details in the pine trees" and judging that the dynamic range will be high from shadows in the trees and white of the snow

I question the statement that "the dynamic range will be high" during a heavy snowstorm. The only heavy snowstorms that I have been in had little to no sun on the scene and had mostly shades of grey/gray (always get the two mixed up) to record both shadows and highlights on film. I think the first answer of develop normally is most likely correct......Regards!

DREW WILEY · Feb 12, 2015

If you're trying to capture and extreme contrast scene with detail all the way from sparkly snow in direct sun right down into dark rocks or
bark, you do need a long-scale film like one of the TMax products. Sure you can do it by "minus" developing almost any film, but at the
expense of compressing rather than featuring microtonality. But many snow scenes, esp if the snow is still falling or if there is overcast,
are actually mild contrast situations. There are very few major films I haven't seriously tried in both kinds of scenario. Tell me your film and I'll probably have a good idea how to make it work. Exposure and development is no different than an equivalent contrast ratio in any other subject. I don't want to complicate this here with talk about filters, Zone System, developer options, etc. The basics of metering, development, and printing have to be learned first anyway. With small cameras one can obviously bracket a series of exposures to speed
up the learning curve. Afterwards, a simple meter reading will do.

amellice · Feb 12, 2015

DREW WILEY said:
Tell me your film and I'll probably have a good idea how to make it work.

OP mentioned it's tri-x at 200.

DREW WILEY · Feb 12, 2015

Garsh. Tri-X has a fair amount of toe to it. Sure wouldn't be my first choice for a snow-scene film. Unless someone has advanced skills they
might have to sacrifice some shadow separation in a brightly lit scene in order to preserve sparkle in the highlights. Otherwise, the second
step would be to follow threads on compensating development techniques, unless someone feel competent to work with pyro developers (toxic). There are all kinds of ways to do it, but thankfully we now have some excellent VC papers which allow some salvaging of overexposed film, which is basically what you have to do with Tri-X to get good separation on the toe.

Sirius Glass · Feb 12, 2015

amellice said:
OP mentioned it's tri-x at 200.

Shoot at box speed ISO 400 and use an incident meter. See earlier post.

blockend · Feb 13, 2015

mporter012 said:
You are photographing some pine trees in a heavy snowstorm, shooting tri-x at 200. How do you develop?

It depends what percentage of the image is comprised of snow, and how the meter works. In heavy falling snow I generally cheat and use flash. A rule of thumb is one-and-a-half stops over if you want detail in objects and figures, but snow in direct sun really demands precise spot metering, especially if a figure is back lit. All assuming you develop as you normally would.

Snowstorm.

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency