Way Beyond Monochrome's "quick and easy" way to shoot better negatives... works.

[Kino]

Not quite ready to devote the time and energy to a full-blown Zone System calibration of my film stocks, I decided to try the "quick and easy" method noted in the "Customizing Film Speed and Development" chapter.

I had nothing to lose and I do tend to have a problem with obtaining negatives that print well with a condenser enlarger (all of mine are such), so I tried it.

Worked remarkably well for me. Rated Arista EDU 100 at 32 ISO and reduced processing time in XTOL 1:1 by 15%, as the day was bright and largely cloudy.

The premise is pretty simple:

• On a flat, cloudy day -- process normal
• On a bright, but cloudy day, reduce ISO by 2/3 stops and processing by 15%
• On a bright, sunny day, reduce ISO by 1 1/3 stops and processing by 30%

My situation was hovering between the two upper extremes, so reduced ISO by 1 1/3, but reduced my processing time by 15% and it still worked good.

I have yet to print these negatives, but I am pleased with the outcome. Three others are in the general gallery...

 

[pentaxuser]

The quick and easy way always seemed to me to be just what it says, namely quick and easy and your shots bear this out but what would be interesting for me and possibly others is what would be the differences had you used box speed and normal development time

The lighting in your shots looks to be fairly flat and I just wonder how much different they'd look if you had chosen the box speed.

Does 1 1/3 mean that you shot at 40 instead of 100? If so that seems a large reduction in speed for the light conditions

Thanks

pentaxuser

 

[Kino]

I can pretty much guarantee if I had used box speed and normal processing time, the negatives would have been pretty high contrast. The light, while not full sunlight, was bright. There was a substantial difference between the shade under the porch and the exterior of the cabin. In fact, I had little hope the porch shot would be reasonably detailed outside of the shade, but as you can see, it held up well at 8 seconds and f22.

I exposed the film at 32 ISO as opposed to the normal 100 ISO, so a stop and 2/3 increase in exposure.

In the future, I need to take multiple shots and process one of them with a "normal" exposure and processing as a control, but I did not have the foresight to do this on this outing.

 

[mshchem]

Sounds like good advice, especially for condenser enlargers.

 

[Kino]

Just went down and tried to print the negative of the cabin and had to use a 0.5 contrast filter on Ilford MGRC.

Guess I should have cut the development time by 30% instead of 15%.

I didn't realize how brutal these condensers could be!

 

[mshchem]

Just went down and tried to print the negative of the cabin and had to use a 0.5 contrast filter on Ilford MGRC.

Guess I should have cut the development time by 30% instead of 15%.

I didn't realize how brutal these condensers could be!

I found that with a typical Beseler 4x5 enlarger that I would see close to a full grade of contrast difference on VC paper. This using Beseler's Dichro color head in normal diffusion mode vs the same color head (with Beseler's adapter) and using their condensers.
Not really any different than what Ansel Adams found when going from condenser to cold light heads, only he used different grades of papers.
I remember back 30+ years ago, playing around with this technique with excellent results.