I shoot monochrome film 99% of the time and silver print it. As I have often noted here, I've been on a multi-year journey to find what it takes to wring out the very best in my negatives. After over 40 years in the darkroom, on- and off, I wanted to see what "better" might look like. I guess boredom becomes the engine of change.
The starting point was standard Zone System orthodoxy for establishing effective film speed and to give proper shadow detail and control the highlights. This worked and worked well, but something was still missing. After a lot of reading and poking around it became clear that the issue was the Zone System methods tend to compress mid-tone contrast, especially with high SBR subjects. You see this all the time. A photograph that should be compelling with great composition and subject but it lacks that "Aha" that makes a print sing.
So, I went off to explore divided development, (semi) stand development, Extreme Minimal Agitation, as well as a bunch of new (to me) developers and film emulsions. The goal was to find the magic sauce that gave me good shadow detail, controlled highlights, good mid-tone contrast, sharpness, and acceptable grain. Although I started down this path nearly 4 years ago with 4x5, the last year especially has been mostly work with 35mm because it is the most demanding of all formats (and it gave me an excuse to build the lusted for Leica system I always wanted
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that I produced a lot of dreck along the way - that's the nature of experimentation. (And I never want to speak about the ratholes I went down with what turned out to be failing developer ... grrrrrr.)
What I've come to understand (and I am probably the last one in the world to figure this out) is that, not only does Zone System tend to compress mid-tones, it encourages the creation of negatives that are "too hot". It turns out that the "0.1DU over FB+F" standard is somewhat overstated and depends mightily on just how you see shadows and/or how you want to render them.
Adhering to this rule slavishly had me exposing in a way that gave me more dense negatives than I liked, even in the face of the reduced development time Zone System calibration yields. My negatives had good shadows, but even compensating developers (D-23, Pyrocat-HD, PMK) and standing-type development were giving me highlights that were not fully blocked, but hard to print through.
So I started backing off development time and/or increasing developer dilution and reducing EI slightly slight from box, rather than the 1/2 box speed that Zone System would have me use. (Increased dilution has the further benefit of increasing acutance in most cases.) And bang! My negatives started printing themselves (almost). The shadows and highlights were still well placed but the lower density of the negative meant that printing wasn't an endless exercise in split VC burning.
All this came to mind as I was recently reading Barry Thornton's "Edge Of Darkness". He makes some of the same case - that many/most negatives are overdeveloped yielding excessive grain and loss of apparent sharpness. Aha! I found confirmation. This also accounts for why some prints seem less than optimally sharp when you did everything "right". (As an aside, I HIGHLY recommend this book for the advanced practitioner.)
I plan ongoing work in this area, but as of today, I am using these general schemes for all the films in regular rotation: Double-X, Tri-X 400, Fomapan 200. FP4+ and HP5+ yet to be tested. In almost all cases, I am using Extreme Minimal Agitation to encourage mid-tone contrast expansion and Mackie edge effects:
Normal SBR:
Very long SBR: (Yet to be done rigorously)
Very short SBRs:
As always, YMMV, but I thought I'd share ...
The starting point was standard Zone System orthodoxy for establishing effective film speed and to give proper shadow detail and control the highlights. This worked and worked well, but something was still missing. After a lot of reading and poking around it became clear that the issue was the Zone System methods tend to compress mid-tone contrast, especially with high SBR subjects. You see this all the time. A photograph that should be compelling with great composition and subject but it lacks that "Aha" that makes a print sing.
So, I went off to explore divided development, (semi) stand development, Extreme Minimal Agitation, as well as a bunch of new (to me) developers and film emulsions. The goal was to find the magic sauce that gave me good shadow detail, controlled highlights, good mid-tone contrast, sharpness, and acceptable grain. Although I started down this path nearly 4 years ago with 4x5, the last year especially has been mostly work with 35mm because it is the most demanding of all formats (and it gave me an excuse to build the lusted for Leica system I always wanted
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that I produced a lot of dreck along the way - that's the nature of experimentation. (And I never want to speak about the ratholes I went down with what turned out to be failing developer ... grrrrrr.)What I've come to understand (and I am probably the last one in the world to figure this out) is that, not only does Zone System tend to compress mid-tones, it encourages the creation of negatives that are "too hot". It turns out that the "0.1DU over FB+F" standard is somewhat overstated and depends mightily on just how you see shadows and/or how you want to render them.
Adhering to this rule slavishly had me exposing in a way that gave me more dense negatives than I liked, even in the face of the reduced development time Zone System calibration yields. My negatives had good shadows, but even compensating developers (D-23, Pyrocat-HD, PMK) and standing-type development were giving me highlights that were not fully blocked, but hard to print through.
So I started backing off development time and/or increasing developer dilution and reducing EI slightly slight from box, rather than the 1/2 box speed that Zone System would have me use. (Increased dilution has the further benefit of increasing acutance in most cases.) And bang! My negatives started printing themselves (almost). The shadows and highlights were still well placed but the lower density of the negative meant that printing wasn't an endless exercise in split VC burning.
All this came to mind as I was recently reading Barry Thornton's "Edge Of Darkness". He makes some of the same case - that many/most negatives are overdeveloped yielding excessive grain and loss of apparent sharpness. Aha! I found confirmation. This also accounts for why some prints seem less than optimally sharp when you did everything "right". (As an aside, I HIGHLY recommend this book for the advanced practitioner.)
I plan ongoing work in this area, but as of today, I am using these general schemes for all the films in regular rotation: Double-X, Tri-X 400, Fomapan 200. FP4+ and HP5+ yet to be tested. In almost all cases, I am using Extreme Minimal Agitation to encourage mid-tone contrast expansion and Mackie edge effects:
Normal SBR:
- Expose at EI 1/3 stop slower than box
- Pyrocat-HDC 1.5:1:250
- 90sec initial agitation
- 10sec agitation at 8,14, 21min
- Done at 28 min
- As above but only two agitations after initial, not three
Very long SBR: (Yet to be done rigorously)
- Increase dilution to 1.5:1:300
- As above but only two agitations after initial, not three
Very short SBRs:
- Expose at EI equal to box speed
- Pyrocat-HD 1.5:1:250
- Initial agitation for 2 minutes
- 15 seconds agitation at 31 min
- Done at 60 min
- This may still be "too hot" even for short SBRs - testing is ongoing
As always, YMMV, but I thought I'd share ...
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