"Stand Development" when is it called for.......if ever?

Alan Johnson said:

Since post 66 only "correct" stand development giving approximately the same slope of the curve, "gamma" has been discussed.
The students that want different are correct, they can stand develop to "gamma infinity" as expounded by Mortensen.
http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Mortensen/mortensen.html

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Actually the 1+39 example above shows the characteristics of what Mortensen is suggesting the toe is steeper (better separation) and the mid/high tone portions of the curve are flatter (less separation). Mortensen was working with films that had markedly different curves than what is available today. Films today generally have longer straight lines than what was available to Mortensen, so today's shoulders are normally nowhere near the upper red line/white point. The world changed, Mortensen's full reality doesn't exist anymore, only parts of his thoughts are applicable.

Just a thought but stand seems to me to be in the bucket of techniques that attract people that tend to scan their negatives, they are intentionally looking for fairly flat negatives with low grain but with edge effects to bring some of the sharpness back lost in scanning. Learning analog printing has changed my approach to the negative big time, I am no longer scared of meaty looking negatives, I use a colour enlarger (LPL 7700) so a fulsome developed negative is a bonus if anything, also the grain is nothing like as apparent as on a scan (IMHE) which is something that easily becomes horrible when scanning dense negatives (Minolta 5400, very sharp but very grainy sometimes). For sure dense highlights can mean very long burn times sometimes but as described above the detail is there you just need to get at it.

markbarendt said:

With regard to the shadow separation, it depends on the EI you use when shooting in the field, placement on the curve is a variable. If you open up your camera a bit more when you shoot all the tones move right correspondingly.

The practical effect of this is that tones that may have been on the toe are now up where the film curve is steeper, so camera exposure can fix the problem too. With slightly more camera exposure the whole negative is more dense which then requires more enlarger exposure (different scan and adjust settings). That extra enlarger exposure moves the red lines (the black and white points) up higher. With that change you are off the toe and the shadow tone separation issue is moot.

Ample camera exposure is a more reliable fix for shadow detail problems than trying to overdevelop the film toe.

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Right so the only time you are going to see any benefit is a low contrast scene where you are forced to shoot on the toe and want maximum expansion of a few tones eg handheld low contrast low light shooting where you are forced to take what you are given.

Im not sure about higher contrast handheld low light shooting. Im assuming those higher contrast tones are going to be too murky. Is it possible to do a combination of a + b to bump up shadow contrast and straighten out the mid to high tones curve eg. Agitate 10s every minute for 5 minutes followed by stand for say 30 minutes or is that the rabbithole of nonsense.

Im using unperforated 16mm film so things like drag around sprockets isnt an issue for me.

NJH said:

Just a thought but stand seems to me to be in the bucket of techniques that attract people that tend to scan their negatives, they are intentionally looking for fairly flat negatives with low grain but with edge effects to bring some of the sharpness back lost in scanning. Learning analog printing has changed my approach to the negative big time, I am no longer scared of meaty looking negatives, I use a colour enlarger (LPL 7700) so a fulsome developed negative is a bonus if anything, also the grain is nothing like as apparent as on a scan (IMHE) which is something that easily becomes horrible when scanning dense negatives (Minolta 5400, very sharp but very grainy sometimes). For sure dense highlights can mean very long burn times sometimes but as described above the detail is there you just need to get at it.

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I think you're onto something.

I digital dupe my film. Sometimes all I need is a baseline negative, nothing one way or another and stand will do it.

I believe Mortensens favourite negative was slightly underexposed and developed in undiluted developer to gamma infinity to give maximum separation in the highlights,for his portrait photography, and not as described in post 82.It qualifies as stand development, but not as we know it.

i understand why he like his negatives like that. i have printed some dense negatives .. so dense
you can't see through them with a light bulb and the only way to print them is with a 300watt bulb ( as one would use for silver chloride paper )
and RC paper ... they take about a 6 or 10 second exposures and the prints are beautiful.
but i don't always make them "standing" sometimes i just develop them for a long time the other way

jnanian said:

i understand why he like his negatives like that. i have printed some dense negatives .. so dense
you can't see through them with a light bulb

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In the old days, photographers used to call those "bulletproof" negatives. Those negs that are too thin, they're called "negligee".

Mainecoonmaniac said:

In the old days, photographers used to call those "bulletproof" negatives. Those negs that are too thin, they're called "negligee".

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yeah ... i was gonna say bulletproof but these are like armour and its like xmas morning everytime
i find one and print it cause i have no clue what it is or what surprise is in store for me ...

jnanian said:

yeah ... i was gonna say bulletproof but these are like armour and its like xmas morning everytime
i find one and print it cause i have no clue what it is or what surprise is in store for me ...

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Printing blocked up blocked highlights is the worst. The rule of exposing your paper for the highlights don't apply here. There's no grade of paper that will save burning in highlights.

Mainecoonmaniac said:

Printing blocked up blocked highlights is the worst. The rule of exposing your paper for the highlights don't apply here. There's no grade of paper that will save burning in highlights.

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actually these print better and easier than anything i have ever printed , no burning or dodging at all
its kind of like printing a silver chloride print from an azo negative but its a rc print from a armor negative LOL
i kind of strive for these types of films now

Craig75 said:

Right so the only time you are going to see any benefit is a low contrast scene where you are forced to shoot on the toe and want maximum expansion of a few tones eg handheld low contrast low light shooting where you are forced to take what you are given.

Im not sure about higher contrast handheld low light shooting. Im assuming those higher contrast tones are going to be too murky. Is it possible to do a combination of a + b to bump up shadow contrast and straighten out the mid to high tones curve eg. Agitate 10s every minute for 5 minutes followed by stand for say 30 minutes or is that the rabbithole of nonsense.

Im using unperforated 16mm film so things like drag around sprockets isnt an issue for me.

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Look at the curves here:
https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/delta-100-in-ddx-1-4-tray-method-film-test.154810/

Draw lines across them and you can see how the steepness of the curve and subject placement can be manipulated.

With regard to wanting a bit more toe development the one single data point we have seems to suggest that is reasonable, but it's just one data point and on a film that you may not be using.

With regard to expansion, no. Your thought is a bit muddy.

The steepest curves stretch a shorter range of scene data (low contrast scene like overcast day) across the paper's range. Steep curves produce snappier results.

The flattest curves squash a long range of scene data (clear day shooting into the sun and wanting shadow detail in the fore ground) into the paper's range. Flatter curves produce less snappy/more gray results across a wide range of scene detail.

Can someone please explain what developing to “gamma infinity” means? What does the curve look like?

Google gamma infinity Jacobson
Brings up an entry in the manual of photography , sorry I cannot post a link from my device.

tomfrh said:

Can someone please explain what developing to “gamma infinity” means? What does the curve look like?

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My impression is that A) infinity is a marketing term and B) that it's about teasing all the shadow detail out of a film that can be had.

Films were typically slower way back when, even our venerable Tri-X started out life as a 200 speed film IIRC.

The log scale on the bottom represents how much light bounced off a subject in the scene and made it to the film. If we say we want detail in the clouds and the light that reaches the film is at 2.8 log, using normal development (purple) we won’t have detail in the print unless we change something.

If we reduce camera exposure we lose shadow detail but the highlights slide down under the white point.
If we increase enlarger exposure instead (move my lines up to say 0.3 & 1.3) we again lose shadow detail in print but the highlight detail prints.
The effect of either of these on the print is the same.

If we use the blue curve development (minus or pull) we can get more of the highlights and shadow on paper. This makes the whole photo look less snappy.
If we stick with normal development and use a softer paper my lines separate a bit (say from 0.1 to 1.2) and the rest of the photo gets a bit more gray.
The effect of either of these on the print is the same.

The point is that there’s more than one way to skin a cat and there is no free lunch. When you ‘improve’ one thing, you pay a price somewhere else.

Alan Johnson said:

Google gamma infinity Jacobson
Brings up an entry in the manual of photography

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markbarendt said:

My impression is that A) infinity is a marketing term and B) that it's about teasing all the shadow detail out of a film that can be had.

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Ahh, got it now. It's essentially maximum achievable gamma, rather than "infinite" gamma?

tomfrh said:

Ahh, got it now. It's essentially maximum achievable gamma, rather than "infinite" gamma?

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Yep.

tomfrh said:

Can someone please explain what developing to “gamma infinity” means? What does the curve look like?

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can't tell you what the curve looks like
but found here: http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Mortensen/mortensen.html
Mortensen Revisited An Analysis of Mortensen’s 7-Derivative Technique by Ed Buffaloe

under section named "development"

"The fourth and final factor in the making of a good negative is correct development. Mortensen specifies what he calls “gamma infinity” development, which he defines as “the fullest development that it is possible to secure without the intervention of chemical fog.” [p. 202] His theory is that the reduction in exposure in the low values will be at least partially made up for by a very full development. To this end he recommends that “developers of a rather low potential should be used,” [p. 277] and development times should be extended to one-half hour or longer [p. 274]. A major omission in his otherwise very complete book is a total lack of information on agitation. It took me quite some time to figure out that the reason Mortensen doesn’t mention agitation is that he rarely used any."

at the end of the article there are linked articles and information if you want more to read
they say ( sorry i haven't got 1st hand exerience ) that moretenson's books are informative and fun to read

i am sure if someone wanted to, they could make / plot a curve .. but instead it would be better to make some dense negatives and some prints**
as stated before the prints ive made from negatives with a lot of density are the easiest to print, as long as you have enough light to penetrate them,
and you have enough contempt for your materials.

** contact prints not enlargements, you will be sitting there all day trying to enlarge a dense frame
even with a D2HI bulb in your aristo head ... get a flood light that people use to print on silver chloride paper ( azo, lodima &c )
negatives and make your prints with that ...

paulbarden said:

Utilizing sensitometry in ones work is not requisite for the making of great art.

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Neither is it a detriment, and for some people it can help.

jnanian said:

.. but instead it would be better to make some dense negatives and some prints**
as stated before the prints ive made from negatives with a lot of density are the easiest to print,

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I agree wholeheartedly with John here. Get practice printing and ample camera exposure, it makes life better. With most negative films there is no reason to be afraid of ample, or even considerably more than ample camera exposure.

I always always give way more exposure than necessary.

at what point do you start to lose sharpness tho?

I haven't noticed with larger negatives that are contact printed.

markbarendt said:

I agree wholeheartedly with John here. Get practice printing and ample camera exposure, it makes life better. With most negative films there is no reason to be afraid of ample, or even considerably more than ample camera exposure.

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In our darkroom group, we are doing a demonstration/experiment regarding Zone System techniques. The two of us working on the demonstration come at it from slightly different directions.
I shoot roll film exclusively, so it is relatively rare for me to use development controls to systematically expand or contract contrast - at least not to the degree of specificity that a full Zone System approach requires. The other presenter (who may decide to join in - he is a member here as well) shoots LF, and does use the full set of controls when they are called for.
Interestingly though, even when he is shooting roll film, he tends to give the negatives much more exposure than I do.
He tends to approach printing in a different way as well.
In the first part of our demonstration/experiment we shot two rolls (same camera and lens and shutter) of some example negatives of the same, static shot . We happened to be working under really flat light, so we chose to develop one roll normally, and one for considerably more time - 33% in this case. Each roll included several different exposure choices, including an incident based reading (my preference) and a spot meter based reading using a grey card in the scene. We then bracketed around the grey card plus spot meter recommended exposure. In order to make the post development and printing analysis more interesting, we also recorded spot meter readings of several other elements in the scene.
It will be interesting to compare straight prints from the incident meter setting negatives and the grey card plus spot meter setting negatives. I'm particularly interested in how the highlights and shadows will render, even though my preference is to print to the mid-tones.

I wish I could go to that, Matt, but alas it's on Friday during school hours...