What are some fine grained, high resolution B&W film & development combinations which are good for lowering the contrast?

[Milpool]

If you are interested in high print quality (of course this depends on aesthetic preferences, but generally speaking...), the bottom line is you need to work on the print (or the editing in the case of digital scans etc.). In particular if you have a high contrast subject, you can't underdevelop your way to a great straight print. Making great prints is all about dodging/burning and/or localized contrast control. The negative is really the easy part.

Aha! I stole my Rodinal HR-50 recipe from him. It's a good one.

This is using it with half frame. It's only on crazy scenes like this where I wish I could just get a little more midtones. The shadows on the rocks have detail before my contrast curve, but I find if I try to make them look how I like, the water loses its good tonality.

Maybe a job for selective dodging and burning? But I rarely adjust local contrast on my photos, I don't usually have the time.

View attachment 397550

 

[Donald Qualls]

I would recommend a divided version of D23 over a diluted version...(or maybe Diafine). I think the divided developers work well when taming the high end while potentially keeping good contrast in shadows.

As an alternative to divided developer(s), my method (reduced agitation) seems to do exactly this -- bring up the shadows without allowing the highlights to block up or run away. I started this technique with Parodinal at1:50, but I've also used it with stock strength D-23 and Xtol. My "normal" process is to double developing time from charts for the dilution I'm using, but agitate only every third minute, instead of once or twice a minute. This allows the highlights to locally exhaust the developer at the emulsion surface while the shadows get a lot of time to develop. The effect is more pronounced with dilute developer, no doubt, but if you run stock strength with replenishment, it still works.

 

[Europan]

If you don’t mind the lack of panchromacy, you may want to try out print films. You have Bergger print as sheets, then ORWO PF 2, and Kodak X302. These stocks develop to medium contrast in diluted or appropriate formula baths. Finely grained, relatively cheap

 

[Marcelo Paniagua]

I would vouch for POTA developer.

It decrease the contrast and give you a great greyscale.

PHENIDONE EXTENDED RANGE DEVELOPER (POTA)

I've use it on Aviphot family of film (Aviphot 40 and 80), which have high contrast,with great results.

Downside is that it make you lose one step of speed. Also no particular fine grained but havent notice any problem with Aviphot 40 (fine grained) so nothing to complain.

 

[chuckroast]

Aha! I stole my Rodinal HR-50 recipe from him. It's a good one.

This is using it with half frame. It's only on crazy scenes like this where I wish I could just get a little more midtones. The shadows on the rocks have detail before my contrast curve, but I find if I try to make them look how I like, the water loses its good tonality.

Maybe a job for selective dodging and burning? But I rarely adjust local contrast on my photos, I don't usually have the time.

View attachment 397550

And this is why I started exploring semistand and Extreme Minimal Agitation (EMA) techniques.

The problem with the usual "expose more, develop less" schemes is that - while this does work to preserve shadows and highlights - this approach has the bad side-effect of compressing middle tones, sometimes a lot. This can be deadly because, often, the subject in the midtones is where the picture gets its meaning.

With semistand and EMA, you can get all three: good shadows, protected highlights, and well expanded midtones. The price for this is that the process can be fiddly.

In fairness, there are other ways to try to get there including divided development, compensating developers, and Kachel's SLIMT.

 

[koraks]

With semistand and EMA, you can get all three

Not really. There's really no free lunch anywhere. What you're describing is a curve that would look like this:

I.e. good contrast in shadows, midtones as well as highlights, while the total density range of the negative remains limited.

The thing that sort of starts to resemble this and might possibly exist (although you'll be hard-pressed to create it in reality) would go something like this:

I.e. a lumpy & bumpy curve that favors some parts of its range at the expense of others - after all, you can't have a high gamma locally in the curve and a low gamma for the entire curve without sacrificing something. And, again, it's really, really difficult to get a film to do something like the above, and (semi)stand sure as heck doesn't do it.

In reality, what you may get with (semi-)stand is something like this:

I.e. a strong compensating behavior that favors shadow and midtone contrast, but sloping off as density increases. Differentiation in the highlights will consequently be poor.

The problem with the whole semi-stand-magic argument is that it's a mathematical impossibility. It can work, alright, but you always sacrifice one thing for another. If you project a strong compensating curve in the negative to the image earlier posted, you get something like this:

but (given enough exposure) with a little more detail in the shadows. However, as you can see, it still comes at great cost of what happens in the highlights.

No free lunch. You want good shadows, midtones and highlights in the same image, you have to optimize each part of the curve (and hence, the image) separately. This means burning & dodging in the darkroom, or masked adjustment curves in digital post.

This is not to say that some form of compensating development doesn't have its merits. It can be helpful. Likewise, reduced agitation can be helpful, esp. when it comes to acutance in enlarged small format exposures (so quite relevant in that regard to OP). What it does not do, is the kind of magic along the lines of "good contrast everywhere". You can't have your cake and eat it.

 

[chuckroast]

Not really. There's really no free lunch anywhere. What you're describing is a curve that would look like this:
View attachment 397561
I.e. good contrast in shadows, midtones as well as highlights, while the total density range of the negative remains limited.

The thing that sort of starts to resemble this and might possibly exist (although you'll be hard-pressed to create it in reality) would go something like this:
View attachment 397566
I.e. a lumpy & bumpy curve that favors some parts of its range at the expense of others - after all, you can't have a high gamma locally in the curve and a low gamma for the entire curve without sacrificing something. And, again, it's really, really difficult to get a film to do something like the above, and (semi)stand sure as heck doesn't do it.

In reality, what you may get with (semi-)stand is something like this:
View attachment 397568
I.e. a strong compensating behavior that favors shadow and midtone contrast, but sloping off as density increases. Differentiation in the highlights will consequently be poor.

The problem with the whole semi-stand-magic argument is that it's a mathematical impossibility. It can work, alright, but you always sacrifice one thing for another. If you project a strong compensating curve in the negative to the image earlier posted, you get something like this:
View attachment 397569
but (given enough exposure) with a little more detail in the shadows. However, as you can see, it still comes at great cost of what happens in the highlights.

No free lunch. You want good shadows, midtones and highlights in the same image, you have to optimize each part of the curve (and hence, the image) separately. This means burning & dodging in the darkroom, or masked adjustment curves in digital post.

This is not to say that some form of compensating development doesn't have its merits. It can be helpful. Likewise, reduced agitation can be helpful, esp. when it comes to acutance in enlarged small format exposures (so quite relevant in that regard to OP). What it does not do, is the kind of magic along the lines of "good contrast everywhere". You can't have your cake and eat it.

But I never claimed to get "good contrast everywhere". What I claimed, is that the usual approach of underdeveloping to protect the highlights almost always comes at the cost of compressed midtones and that this doesn't have to happen.

Sure, there is no free lunch here. You are inherently limited by the behavior of the medium, but the problem to be solved isn't how the H/D curve works. The problem to be solved is how to compress highlights without also clobbering the middle tones. This is a "how you develop problem" more than anything else.

I first ran into this as I absorbed classic Zone System - I was producing negatives with a full dynamic range but with really bland midtone local contrast. The first time I tried low agitation/high dilution, I was astonished how much pop I got in those middle tones ... and that's where most prints really live.

Consider the image below.

The light was hammering the top of the towers and the bottom was in deep shadow. I wanted to protect the top detail and have a hint of detail inside the factory.. If I had just increased exposure and underdeveloped, the foreground would have gone dull gray. But, I wanted that foreground with the water and short concrete walls to have contrast. This was accomplished via EMA.

Leica M4, Summicron 35mm f/2 ASPH, Kodak Double-X, EI 200, Pyrocat-HDC 1.5:1:250, 30min EMA:

 

[Milpool]

I once tried to show some objective results / sensitometry for the infamous "EMA". Needless to say the discussion did not go well. Anyhow, without getting into the weeds what you tend to get is a very pronounced s-shaped curve which retains midtone contrast at the expense of obliterated shadows/highlights. From a tone reproduction perspective it typically translates to print midtones that look anywhere between normal and "wired" (a-la heavy unsharp mask) with somewhat abruptly truncated shadows / highlights. Extra exposure can help the low values but then you lose more highs since the effective exposure range of the film has been reduced. Then there are the uniformity issues and relatively grainy image structure (you can't have everything).

Of course it's a matter of degree, as well as personal preference - if that is truly the desired look then I have no argument against it.

There just aren't any free lunches when it comes to very high contrast subjects.

 

[chuckroast]

I once tried to show some objective results / sensitometry for the infamous "EMA". Needless to say the discussion did not go well.

Yeah, I've never understood the vitriol and heel digging that goes on about this stuff. It is a way to work for certain classes of problems, not a theological debate.

Anyhow, without getting into the weeds what you tend to get is a very pronounced s-shaped curve which retains midtone contrast at the expense of obliterated shadows/highlights. From a tone

That's not been my experience, but it IS a matter of degree and thoughtful application. With Pyrocat-HD[C] you can get away with a bit more of this if you are VC printing on silver paper, because the stain helps to also rein in highlight contrast.

reproduction perspective it typically translates to print midtones that look anywhere between normal and "wired" (a-la heavy unsharp mask) with somewhat abruptly truncated shadows /

Absolutely can be overdone - I know, I've done it along the way. Highly textured surfaces in the midtones can be rendered with an almost comic book graphical rendering, for example.

highlights. Extra exposure can help the low values but then you lose more highs since the effective exposure range of the film has been reduced. Then there are the uniformity issues and relatively grainy image structure (you can't have everything).

Of course it's a matter of degree, as well as personal preference - if that is truly the desired look then I have no argument against it.

There just aren't any free lunches when it comes to very high contrast subjects.

It's always true if you are a silver printer - you're trying to map a scene with a huge SBR onto a film with a limited non-linear dynamic range, onto a paper that has about 5-ish stops of range.
I think the point is to deliver a negative that has highlight detail, shadow detail, and midtone contrast so just where there 5 stops are applied can be done knowing the negative will have something everywhere.

I realize that digital presents somewhat of a different challenge. If anything, even lower contrast negatives seem to be indicated if the intent is digital scanning.

 

[albireo]

Making a good print (or digital version) takes some effort. I'd try to let go of the concept that a straight print/scan should somehow always result a satisfactory result.
Getting pleasing tonality in a print virtually always in my experience involves printing at one or two grades higher than what a straight print requires, and then selectively burn/dodge areas. With a photo like the one you posted, you could smash the entire scene flat through compression - but it'll be just, that: flat. If you want to bring out the 'drama' in the rocks while retaining the sparkle in the water, you'll have to expand the tonal scale in both areas. Since you can never do that in a single exposure, this means dodging & burning (or the digital equivalents thereof) will be necessary.

Making a good scan can take surprisingly little effort if the detail is there, in the negative. A straight scan (with a minimum of histogram tweaks if desired, of course) of a well exposed/well developed negative can be really, really pleasant and require no local PS processing.

I have scanned thousands and thousands of negatives and never once used the dodge/burn tools in Photoshop. I prefer letting nature doing the dodging and burning for me, via for instance the occasional cloud or tree canopy

We would have to see the negative for the scan posted above by @loccdor, but my feeling is that the top part, where the rocks in shadow lie, is virtually transparent. No detail for the scanner to pick up. Nothing, or preciously little, for PS to enhance via dodging or burning.

I'd always go for tweaking exposure and development instead of postprocessing, but that's just me.

 

[albireo]

If you are interested in high print quality (of course this depends on aesthetic preferences, but generally speaking...), the bottom line is you need to work on the print (or the editing in the case of digital scans etc.).

Yes, the above depends exclusively on aesthetic preferences.

There is no law that prescribes one should work on the print or intensively edit the negative post-scanning. In fact, many legendary photographers eschew dodging and burning altogether, and concentrate on robust exposure and development control, with great results for my taste.

Look at the American landscape modernists of the neo topographic movement, for instance. Many examples of beautiful luminous photography, that would have been utterly ruined by extensive local contrast edits.

 

[xkaes]

I'd always go for tweaking exposure and development instead of postprocessing, but that's just me.

I'm 100% with you there, but even when I get as good a negative as I can make, there is always something that I decide the adjust -- starting with the print size & cropping. Then the overall exposure and contrast(s).

And then the real work begins.

 

[Milpool]

Yes, the above depends exclusively on aesthetic preferences.

There is no law that prescribes one should work on the print or intensively edit the negative post-scanning. In fact, many legendary photographers eschew dodging and burning altogether, and concentrate on robust exposure and development control, with great results.

Look at the American landscape modernists of the neo topographic movement, for instance. Many examples of beautiful luminous photography, that would have been utterly ruined by extensive local contrast edits.

We'll have to disagree a little. While good exposure is always a helpful thing I don't agree development is a very effective control. I'm a fan of the New Topographics but in my opinion the printing sometimes left a lot to be desired. It's difficult to generalize over such a wide array of working methods though.

Of course even given a difficult contrast situation, desired print outcomes can be quite different and there's no right or wrong answer. All I'm asserting is that if you are photographing a very high contrast subject and envision a print with detail everywhere without muddyness, you can't make that automatically happen with negative processing. What you gain in some way you lose in some other way.

This is not to say all unconventional processing techniques are always useless, and there are those who might like to use something like one of these stand/semi-stand processes for a specific look. That's all cool. It just irks me when they are instead peddled as magic solutions for dealing with high contrast. It doesn't work that way. Please note this is not in reference to chuckroast.

 

[Alessandro Serrao]

All I'm asserting is that if you are photographing a very high contrast subject and envision a print with detail everywhere without muddyness, you can't make that automatically happen with negative processing. What you gain in some way you lose in some other way.

And this happens why? I mean the search for perfection (that doesn't exist)...
I agree with you, I couldn't say better.

 

[albireo]

I'm 100% with you there, but even when I get as good a negative as I can make, there is always something that I decide the adjust -- starting with the print size & cropping.

But of course. Cropping, dust removal, global decisions on where to set the black point. Resizing, etc. I'm not trying to say one should slap the file out of the Noritsu machine straight onto Instagram.

I'm talking about the heavy, local contrast edits that many people in the old guard deem to be crucial for making the image 'happen'.

None of those are needed unless one finds them pleasant. I personally don't. I've never once, in many years of photography, managed to make an image of mine look more pleasant to me, more 'right', by cooking it in sepia toning, vignetting, by brightening the faces of people to make them more 'readable', and in general by relying on the heavy use of dodging and burning to make up for suboptimal or inadequate light when the image was taken.

Of course - it might depend on what kind of photography one does. If one is Robert Capa, that tiny Sicilian peasant pointing the way to the huge American private sort of scene is a once in a lifetime thing, so take that shot and work it to death in the darkroom or PS to get that Pulitzer.

Me I'm just a humble amateur taking pictures of things in a 1Km radius around me, if the image doesn't please me after 1 minute on the screen, I'll dump the negative and go back to take it again, making sure sun, clouds and other weather phenomena are dodging and burning the scene to render it more to my liking

 

[koraks]

We all have our reasons to call it a day at some point. Where that point is, is entirely personal. And since it's a hobby for virtually all of us here, it's all good.

 

[albireo]

We'll have to disagree a little. While good exposure is always a helpful thing I don't agree development is a very effective control. I'm a fan of the New Topographics but in my opinion the printing sometimes left a lot to be desired.

And that's where our conversation ends I'm afraid. I'm in awe of the work of the Neo Topographers as printed by the artists and reproduced by Aperture, Steidl, MACK and others.

This is not to say all unconventional processing techniques are always useless, and there are those who might like to use something like one of these stand/semi-stand processes for a specific look

Not sure what stand or semistand have to do with my point on fine-adjusting/fine tuning exposure and contrast during exposure and development. I have never mentioned or advocated stand or semistand. These are techniques that have never worked for me.

The negative is really the easy part.

Er...No. The negative is the really hard part. Prints and scans come and go, the negative is only one. Making it really good is tough.

 

[Paul Howell]

I would recommend a divided version of D23 over a diluted version...(or maybe Diafine). I think the divided developers work well when taming the high end while potentially keeping good contrast in shadows.

That's a good idea, I've been using Diafine of late, it works well with all Foma films, but I have tired Tmax 100. Currently none on hand, next time I order film I will give it a try.

 

[xkaes]

I'm talking about the heavy, local contrast edits that many people in the old guard deem to be crucial for making the image 'happen'.

I don't know about "heavy" or "crucial", but it's pretty "hard" for me not to want to make a cumulonimbus over a desert landscape "happen".

 

[isaac7]

But of course. Cropping, dust removal, global decisions on where to set the black point. Resizing, etc. I'm not trying to say one should slap the file out of the Noritsu machine straight onto Instagram.

I'm talking about the heavy, local contrast edits that many people in the old guard deem to be crucial for making the image 'happen'.

None of those are needed unless one finds them pleasant. I personally don't. I've never once, in many years of photography, managed to make an image of mine look more pleasant to me, more 'right', by cooking it in sepia toning, vignetting, by brightening the faces of people to make them more 'readable', and in general by relying on the heavy use of dodging and burning to make up for suboptimal or inadequate light when the image was taken.

Of course - it might depend on what kind of photography one does. If one is Robert Capa, that tiny Sicilian peasant pointing the way to the huge American private sort of scene is a once in a lifetime thing, so take that shot and work it to death in the darkroom or PS to get that Pulitzer.

Me I'm just a humble amateur taking pictures of things in a 1Km radius around me, if the image doesn't please me after 1 minute on the screen, I'll dump the negative and go back to take it again, making sure sun, clouds and other weather phenomena are dodging and burning the scene to render it more to my liking

Very few of my pictures needed big gyrations under the enlarger to get the result I wanted. Usually I was in capturing light with a large format camera mode so I was able to meter and develop to get the result I saw in front of me. On the other hand I think canonical examples of images that needed tremendous amount of work after development include Moonrise Over Hernandez and most of Cartier Bresson’s work. In both cases time was of the essence when taking the picture. And of course CB was using 35mm and couldn’t adjust development per image even if he was careful with his metering (he wasn’t).

 

[RalphLambrecht]

Quite a lot of the slower films out there are higher contrast than the 400 speeds. But I like to use the slower films for the detail.

What are some good films plus their developing recipes for shooting high contrast scenes? Think of bright full summer sun with harsh shadows.

I like Scala 50/HR-50 but it can lack midtones on scenes with a harsh brightness range. One thing that comes to mind as an alternative is Fuji Acros 100.

I'm shooting in 35mm, full frame or half frame. Curious to know what has worked for you.

This sounds like aclassicc ase for theZone syatem. Whithout going into unneccessary detail, over expose the filmby up to a stop and underdevelop y 25% or more. Contrast will drop immensly. If too much, try +1/2 stop and -15% dev or similar.

 

[xkaes]

If it hasn't sunk in by now, I'm afraid it never will.

 

[chuckroast]

This sounds like aclassicc ase for theZone syatem. Whithout going into unneccessary detail, over expose the filmby up to a stop and underdevelop y 25% or more. Contrast will drop immensly. If too much, try +1/2 stop and -15% dev or similar.

See my posts above Ralph. It is exactly this approach that makes midtones muddy - or can, anyway.

 

[Paul Howell]

This sounds like aclassicc ase for theZone syatem. Whithout going into unneccessary detail, over expose the filmby up to a stop and underdevelop y 25% or more. Contrast will drop immensly. If too much, try +1/2 stop and -15% dev or similar.

I guess it depends on what is unnecessary, first comes visualization, without visualizing and placing the shadow and highlight it is just guess work, the opposite of the ZS is about. Although the ZS can be used with roll film , the ZS works best with sheet film in which each sheet exposed for the shadow and developed to the highlight as visualized. I do the what I think of as a crippled ZS,with roll film, expose shadow for zone III, shadow with details, then develop the roll for Z VII, highlight with texture then fix in printing. For the modern version of the ZS start with testing for E.I ploting a characteric curve for film and developer, for expansion or contraction.

 

[loccdor]

Thanks for all the discussion, it's been helpful. I tried a quick test of dodging the shadows up. I'd say it could definitely be worthwhile to do for an image like this. This was about five minutes of very basic painting the shadows and then applying the dodge blending mode, it could be improved with more time spent.

Unadjusted

Original contrast curve

Localized edits