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.
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.
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
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Original contrast cu
Localized edits
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Why would slower films have higher contrast? - unless you're re-purposing what were essentially micro or technical copying films, like old Tech Pan, which has been done.
It's the characteristic curve of the film which counts with high contrast scenes, regardless of the speed. The only really fine grained film with a long straight line I ever encountered was the late Efke 25.
I had to work with a lot of Tech Pan for exactly that, technical purposes, like sleuthing art fraud in paintings and copy work. Used it in formats all the way from 35mm to 8x10, back when such tasks were done on a copy stand with real film and not digitally yet. But no matter what kind of special developer you did or didn't use, the result never resembled ordinary taking films at all. There were always harsh shadows and highlights.
The term I've seen applied to microfilm stocks (such as the parent stock of CMS 20/CMS 20 II, as I understand it) is "monodispersed" -- all one grain size, which means silver grains are (for the most part) either exposed or unexposed, they either have or haven't received enough light energy to form one or more latent image specks and hence will or won't be developed. The fact we can get any kind of gray scale at all out of these films is because the "monodispersed" is actually a "very slightly heterodispersed" in that it's impossible to make all the grains exactly the same. With the right developer, you can get useful gray scale gamut from microfilms, but you have almost no latitude (over- or under-expose by as little as 2/3 stop and you lose the highlights or shadows) and a range of only four or so stops between extremes in your scene.
As I've noted above, there are films with very low speed but well dispersed grain that will give good gray range in normal development -- but they're typically only available in 35 mm, because they're made for final distribution prints of professional motion pictures. You can expect ISO speeds between 6 and 25 for these, and their characteristics will be similar to KB25 (which is still finer grain than a cubic grain ISO 100 film like FP4+ or Foma 100).
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.
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.
Because the grain size Distribution is lower. So any slow speed film has a lower (total) latitude than a higher speed film (because it is lacking the coarser grains). This however does not mean per se that a higher speed film resolves the problems of the harsh contrasts in the desert better because it also depends on the makeup of the emulsion mix and the behavior on a specific part of the characteristic curve. But in (very) general (lets say very alike films but one being 50 and one being 400 ASA) you have a more forgiving film in the 400 ASA class. This is why we sell dedicated "contrast taming" developers for the HR-50 and CMS 20 II.
The so called "technical" films are nothing but regular even slower speed films. You just get cornered more and more the finer in grain you go.
You don't really need anything slower than Delta 100, T-Max 100, or Acros 100.
Let's keep in mind though that he published that before any of the films existed that @Augustus Caesar refers to. That article was published about a decade before the major leap forward represented by the advent of t-grain B&W films.Here's what David Brooks from Peterson's had to say:
Let's keep in mind though that he published that before any of the films existed that @Augustus Caesar refers to. That article was published about a decade before the major leap forward represented by the advent of t-grain B&W films.
Is Aviphot 40 commercially available?
Now and again someone gets 70mm rolls and bulk load them. I got mine from a person in Poland. He sold them in here some time ago. I can share his email if you wish.
I think he already found the person: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/new-agfa-aviphot-40-120-mm.186571/#post-2893217
The question is if they're still selling this. It's been a while, going by the date of that ad.
I get good results in high contrast scenes with Tri-X exposed at ASA200, developed in D76 1:1 for 7:30 to 8:15 minutes with a 2 minute presoak.
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