• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

Standardizing Contrast Rate

markbarendt

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
May 18, 2008
Messages
9,422
Location
Beaverton, OR
Format
Multi Format
One of the things that I’m finding with B&W printing is that I seem to be leaning toward a certain look or a style, if you will, on paper. I keep finding it at harder grades.


The other thing I have found with my VC printing is that chasing contrast grade sucks, I find no fun there. I’m starting to experiment with graded paper now and so far it is really nice.

With regard to my style it’s become a matter of the finished print I want dictating the “contrast rate” or “look” or “tonality” of the print. I don’t know what word to use there.

This may be old hat for some but for me this is a different way of thinking. No longer letting the negative dictate the grade of contrast required, the paper is now is starting to influence the way I want negatives to be shot and processed.

I have also come to like shooting with lower contrast, long straight line films, C-41 films taught me this. The flexibility and freedom this provides while shooting is good for my creativity. Simply put I can incident meter at an EI that allows plenty of exposure and let the film “worry about” getting the highlights and shadows.

I’m not necessarily worried about printing everything that lands on the film curve. I’m more worried about getting the main subject placed right on the paper and having a nice snappy contrast rate in the print. If I need to burn in a sky or dodge for detail in the shadows, so be it.

So, given that background is there any big reason I should not consider standardizing on Grade 4 or 3?
Are there other questions I need to answer?


Paper suggestions?
 
If you are using rollfilm, the micorcontrast of grade 4 can accentuate the grain and give an impression of greater sharpness than 00. Steve Beskin once posted a series of tone reproduction relationships that demonstrated a case where grade 3 paper had the straightest curve (though still not all that straight).

Nothing wrong with fixing paper grade. It may open you up to some relationships you might not otherwise have discovered, though you may find that chasing film development to match the paper may also suck
 

Sounds interesting, I'll have to experiment with some grade 3.

ic-racer said:
Nothing wrong with fixing paper grade. It may open you up to some relationships you might not otherwise have discovered, though you may find that chasing film development to match the paper may also suck
Click to expand...

Part of my thought here is not to chase. I'm not worried about printing every zone caught on the film from toe to shoulder.

Just want to be able cherry pick say 5-7 stops, anywhere I please, out of a 10-12 stop straight line.

C-41 films normally get the same development every time, making a standard steepness curve, which nicely compliments the fairly hard paper curve of RA-4 almost every time. It seems rare that C-41 negs ever get the whole curve printed.

That's the idea I'd like to work toward with say Delta 400 or HP5.
 
markbarendt said:
I’m more worried about getting the main subject placed right on the paper and having a nice snappy contrast rate in the print. If I need to burn in a sky or dodge for detail in the shadows, so be it.
Click to expand...

I have been preaching the same thing - base the paper contrast on the subject, not the extremes of the negative.

The curse of split grade printing is that it often ignores the subject matter and instead fixes the contrast on the white point and black point of the print - these are almost never where the action is.



You might want to try the TMax films. The straight line response is close to C-41, which isn't surprising as T-Grains are color film technology.

Curves are on page 15:
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/f4016/f4016.pdf

As a comparison, Delta 400 begins to shoulder at 9 stops while TMax films still are still on the upsweep. The Ilford 'curve' is here on page 6 - obviously a bit of a croc as it doesn't show any warts:
http://www.ilfordphoto.com/Webfiles/2010628953322222.pdf
 
ic-racer said:
grade 3 paper had the straightest curve (though still not all that straight).
Click to expand...

It is the same in my experience. Grade 3 in graded and in VC has the smoothest HD curve.

ic-racer said:
you may find that chasing film development to match the paper may also suck
Click to expand...

Wasn't that the whole goal of the Zone System - do all that spot metering and figuring and custom development for each image so the negative prints on #2 paper?
 
There's always the mathematical approach.

Desired Negative Density Range which is also the paper's Log Exposure Range divided by the log scene's Luminance range - flare.

LER/(LSLR - Flare) = CI

To match a paper to a given CI

CI * (LSRL-Flare) = LER
 

Stephen,

Don't know how I can measure those with the tools I have so I'm just going to have to play/experiment.

The other thing is that I know what direction I want to go but I don't know the exact "address".

What I think I'm trying to do is find complimenting curves (a film and a paper matched) that produces a nice clean print and provides really flexible shooting, the only thing I want to chase in the enlarger is exposure/placement of the subject.

I'm giving no weight to any specific SBR. I want a dependable generic setup as dependable as C-41 and RA-4.

I simply want the subject to be able to fall on the film curve "somewhere close" and have the rest of the scene fall in a workable range. I don't want to worry about exposure placement that much.

This is actually a lesson learned from my Holga and RB shooting.

For example, with the RB my favorite lens is the 150SF and I like it wide open at F4 to get the effect, I'm not an F-64 type guy. With the fastest shutter speed limited to 400 I just gotta let the exposure fall where it may in bright situations. Similarly my F4 Petzval lens on my 4x5 with it's hat or a pair of darkslides for a shutter, exposure accuracy is well lets say, marginal at best. All that extra exposure with the RB provides lots of shadow detail in the neg that will simply be allowed to fall to black on paper. I want the long straight line film to absorb all that "extra" light without changing the contrast relationship to the paper.

If I miss the perfect exposure by a couple stops either way I still want a workable neg.
 
Dear Mark;
I have for many years, standardized on a grade#3 paper and always aim my exposure, film choice and development process to that goal. I much prefer to print on graded papers and although variable contrast paper has improved much over the years, it is still inferior regarding local and microcontrast, to fixed grade papers. If you have any doubt as to the veracity of that statement, find a negative that prints with diffusion on grade#3 paper and then print that same negative on VC paper using a grade#3 filter or match the contrast as best you can and then have five people look at the prints and pick which they prefer. More than 90% of the time they will choose the fixed grade print. I love the ease of using VC paper and have been using them since 1962, so I'm no newcomer to them. What VC paper provides is convenience and space savings in your paper storage and adequate if not often, very good prints but for the truly fine print I do not believe fixed grade paper can be surpassed let alone equaled. I chose grade#3 paper as my standard, as I print with a diffuse light source and the ability to tweak contrast by SLIMT and other methods such as lower contrast developers, makes the grade#3 choice more versatile.
Denise Libby
 
In the old days, before MG papers, photogs had to find the paper and grade they liked best, and exposed to satisfy that. I suggest you buy some Emaks grades #2 and #3 and try that out. I have found that it is a tad harder than Kodak and Ilfords in the same grades. I love the stuff, and its not awfully expensive. A word of caution, use a red safe light with it.
 
markbarendt said:
The other thing I have found with my VC printing is that chasing contrast grade sucks, I find no fun there. I’m starting to experiment with graded paper now and so far it is really nice.
Click to expand...

It's all in how one looks at the task at hand , IMO. Though I have an enalrger that I can dial in the various contrast settings (LPL 4550), I don't use split grade printing with it. I always set my global contrast with one filter setting and the reason I can do this with general ease is because I standardize the negative density range in my film/dev testing. My negatives are developed to the same density range from +2 to -3 dev, regardless of SBR, hence the beauty of standardizing with the neg development, IMO.

This level of standardization makes setting the global contrast easy, but I always start from a low contrast work print and I will gradually move up in contrast until the desired global contrast is reached for the particular negative I'm working with----I guess you would call this "chasing" whereas I prefer to think of it as a "creative endeavor"--all other contrast adjustments made once the global contrast is set are done with dodging and burning. I'm free to burn-in local areas at any other contrast setting to get the desired final print that best suits the visualization.
 
Wasn't that the whole goal of the Zone System - do all that spot metering and figuring and custom development for each image so the negative prints on #2 paper?
Click to expand...

No! That was never the point of the zone system. The point of the zone system was to fit the scene brightness range within the negatives' tonal range in such a way as to cram the most useful information possible onto the negative. Adams himself never said that the zone system would give you easy-printing negatives, or negatives that were designed to be printed at a certain contrast grade. The zone system is designed to give you the most options possible in the darkroom, so that you can use your phenomenal cosmic D&B skills to make the print that you want.

If you shoot and develop for negatives that easily print at grade 2, you will very likely be throwing information away in the shadows or the highlights. You might not care, because you might not want those shadows or highlights in the print anyway--but that's not really zone-system orthodoxy.
 
I've kinda worked the way the OP is settling on but I do it with VC paper. I try to get my negatives to generally be exposed and developed for printing at grade 2.5. I can print 90% of what I shoot at somewhere between grade 2 and 3. The finished print does indeed dictate the contrast. I see a print in the fixer and say that looks pretty good but could use a little tiny bit more contrast, so I turn up the magenta 15 points or something, print again, and it comes out looking nice. If that minor contrast change endangers an important shadow detail going black, I can dodge that for a small portion of the exposure.

Changing film really throws a wrench in this convenience. I use TMY2 for 90% of what I do and standardizing on one film is really helpful. Saving a dollar a roll (or less) on another film doesn't pay in terms of wasted test paper and time in the darkroom trying to quickly readapt to something else for a short time.
 
If you consistently have to print at higher contrast grades, you need to develop your negatives for higher contrast. Try developing for about 15 percent longer, and adjust as necessary. Small negatives, like 35 mm, often normally print on grade 3. Bigger negatives generally work at grade 2 or 3. But it is very hard to get really good prints at the higher contrast grades. I have never seen a good print made at grade 5. The negative and the print form a system, and you have to tune the entire system for the best results. Papers and film are designed to look best when prints are made on grade 2 or 3 and the negatives are developed accordingly.
 
After settling on one film in one developer, together with Barry Thorntons' UnZone/NoZone approach, I think I have 35 mm down enough that I can concentrate on printing itself. I aim for grade 2.5 with this process.
 
CPorter said:
My negatives are developed to the same density range from +2 to -3 dev, regardless of SBR, hence the beauty of standardizing with the neg development, IMO.
Click to expand...

I think we are talking about standardizing in different places.

Part of the standardization I'm looking for includes not doing any plus or minus development on the film. The film would always be developed the same. Density would change from neg to neg, quite significantly based on exposure, but theoretically the curve should remain constant and the straight line should stay at the same steepness across every negative. (I am assuming an amply exposed negative and I meter to allow that.)

With my standardized curve, placing enlarger exposure based on a specific mid-tone subject, like a Caucasian face or gray card, should compensate nicely for the density change from neg to neg. Then matching this "fixed" film curve to a specific "fixed curve" graded paper should give me a very predictable result on paper, right?

I feel like a broken record when saying this, but this is how the C-41/RA-4 system works. Low contrast negatives with lots of room between toe and shoulder matched to a high contrast paper, changes in exposure at the camera are "offset" by similar changes at the enlarger. The curves are constant and the "contrast rate and range" of the print is incredibly reliable.
 

Thanks Rick

You are not the first to suggest Emaks.
 
Another suggestion to check out is the fixed grade Fomabrom (this is called Fomabrom only, not Variant) - it's really nice! And quite inexpensive too. Same caution here: use a red safelight.
 

I understand how to adjust film contrast but to support my shooting style lower contrast negatives help. High-contrast short-curve negs, are less forgiving; an unforging curve is not what I want to use with my F4 petzval with a hat as a shutter.

I also agree that the paper and film curves should be complimentary, that's actually the point of the exercise here.

As to the harder grades being tough to print I can only say that the grade 4 I've tried so far has been sweet to use.
 
Have you tried to print with no. 00 and 5 filters? It works great when you develop film always exactly the same. It allows great contrast control without resorting to excessive burning and dodging.
Since either, the 00 or the 5 will barely influence each other, a fantastic tonal range can be achieved. Of course this will only work with MC papers.
 

Please see "The Negative" pg 71-72 in my copy. Expansion and Contraction are talked about as a way of adjusting a short or long scale subject range to print normally.

Normal here is basically as you specify getting the whole shot scene onto a specified paper.

That is not my concern. In fact I find most prints that try to put all of a really long scale neg onto paper fail for me.
 

Nope, I have not.

I'm not looking for a long scale print, many of my subjects can be printed nicely with 5 stops from the film.

I'm not much of a landscape guy. Pictorial stuff and portraits are more my style. I tend to view landscapes as backgrounds, and for me backgrounds are only there to support the main subject. If clouds fade to white some and the shadows in the bushes fade to black, that's fine.
 
This is just something I try for .....

I try to produce negatives with good micro-contrast. By that, I mean contrast that presents the most important tones in the image in a favourable way.

Frequently, those tones are mid-tones. Sometimes, however, those tones are either nearer the highlights (high-key images?) or the shadows (forest shots).

I use printing controls and techniques to bring the other tones under control.

So when I'm trying to standardize my contrast, that is what I'm trying for.
 
"One of the things that I’m finding with B&W printing is that I seem to be leaning toward a certain look or a style, if you will, on paper. I keep finding it at harder grades.

"The other thing I have found with my VC printing is that chasing contrast grade sucks, I find no fun there. I’m starting to experiment with graded paper now and so far it is really nice."

So, you like a healthy amount of contrast. So do I. I also like options, though. For most shots, I will generally not go much beyond a one grade "push" using my film itself, even though I still end up having to print on the higher grades for much of my stuff. I don't want to make a more standard print like shitting glass to achieve (as Ansco John eloquently points out from time to time). There are no drawbacks to using higher filters that would make me want to craft negatives that print to my desired high contrast on a lower grade filter. In other words, why make a significantly abnormally high contrast negative, and lessen the number of ways in which it can be interpreted, just for the sake of using a 2.5 filter? I don't really understand how "chasing contrast grades sucks." I think it is great to have such easy control over ones work.

"With regard to my style it’s become a matter of the finished print I want dictating the “contrast rate” or “look” or “tonality” of the print. I don’t know what word to use there.

"This may be old hat for some but for me this is a different way of thinking. No longer letting the negative dictate the grade of contrast required, the paper is now is starting to influence the way I want negatives to be shot and processed."

That is the key to crating negatives. Of course your paper (or whatever process you use to print) dictates what makes a desirable negative. Negatives exist to make positives, so are technically crafted in such a way that they interact with the printing material in the desired fashion. A "perfect" negative on one paper will quite often be "imperfect" on another paper. Everything technical that we do with film and camera and developer and what have you is something that was worked backward to from a point of knowing the characteristics of our chosen print medium. Printing medium characteristics determine what negative characteristics we should aim for.

"I have also come to like shooting with lower contrast, long straight line films, C-41 films taught me this. The flexibility and freedom this provides while shooting is good for my creativity. Simply put I can incident meter at an EI that allows plenty of exposure and let the film “worry about” getting the highlights and shadows."

It makes sense if the whole exactitude thing slows you down too much to get what you want to get in your pix. However, IMHO, you don't need C-41 b/w films to achieve this. Just how much latitude do you really need in the average situation? More than a few stops either way of the correct exposure? If not, regular b/w performs admirably for most things, without the tonal and processing (and perhaps archival) drawbacks of C-41 b/w films.

"I’m not necessarily worried about printing everything that lands on the film curve. I’m more worried about getting the main subject placed right on the paper and having a nice snappy contrast rate in the print. If I need to burn in a sky or dodge for detail in the shadows, so be it."

An incident meter, an eye for luminance range, and an understanding of how to alter contrast with development and printing are all you need.

"So, given that background is there any big reason I should not consider standardizing on Grade 4 or 3?
Are there other questions I need to answer?"

I have optimized films for grade 3 before, but this is specifically for graded paper, and specifically because of the lack of variety in grades now available. Grades 2 and 4 are the extremes now (though Slavich might have a grade 5), and I like to have the option to go either up a grade or down a grade without monkeying with the developer. That is not possible now if grade 2 is my target grade. So, when I want to print on Emaks, I make flatter negs than I do for VC papers. This lets me make my "normal" print on a grade 3.

What you are asking is whether or not you should do the opposite: to settle on a snappier neg as your normal practice. My first few paragraphs already summed up my opinions on that matter: I might add a grade on the neg as standard practice if I knew I would probably print the material on a harder than normal grade; but for reasons of versatility of the negative, I probably would not add much more except in specific circumstances.

If using graded paper, it makes more sense. But with VC, I don't often push beyond a stop (excepting low light situations, of course) for the above reasons.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
2F/2F said:
So, you like a healthy amount of contrast. So do I.
Click to expand...


Yes.


This brings up a confusion that I'm starting to get over but that I'm sure many have, how we generically use the word contrast in our little world.


In this sense we are talking about “micro” or “local” contrast. I hope those are the right words.


In essence harder papers simply print a shorter portion of the film's curve, which is what I'm after.


The steps between the printed tones grows which gives the illusion of stronger blacks and whiter whites, but the global contrast is still defined by paper white and max-black.




Right now I'm not so interested in a lot of interpretations.


This may simply be where I'm at on my experience/artistic curve.


2F/2F said:
I don't really understand how "chasing contrast grades sucks." I think it is great to have such easy control over ones work.
Click to expand...


Part of the problem is technical, chasing contrast means chasing exposure too and for me, working both variables at the same time means lots of trash. I'm sure that as my experience grows this problem would diminish but I don't see the point.


With a single grade paper there's only one easy variable.


Maybe C-41/RA-4 spoiled me.



Speed of use isn't the big issue, the nature of my cameras and the limits of their designs, is.


When I grab my Holga and go shooting I always seem to get rewarded with a few fun frames. Once the film is in the Holga though, I’m done with the exposure setting choices. Focus, aim, and shoot at ~F11ish and 1/100, that's all that is really available since I super glued the bulb switch into the normal position.

2F/2F said:
An incident meter, an eye for luminance range, and an understanding of how to alter contrast with development and printing are all you need.
Click to expand...


Part of what I think I'm trying to do here is pick the a paper that will print my short scale scenes nicely every time.


The tools I want to use to print a longer scale are burning and dodging. I guess I don't see the point in changing the local contrast relationships.




This optimization is exactly the direction I'm looking to go. Grade 3 seems to be emerging as the best choice to settle on.


That may be enough if I just stay with “normal” film development instead of pulling some.


Everything is a compromise, we'll see.



No, I'm not considering snappier negs.


I've been down that path. It works fine with my 35mm cameras and a shutter that can do 1/4000th but as soon as I grab my RB, Holga, or 4x5 with the Petzval that path gets really rough.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register