What's the dynamic range of B&W film?

It is worth mentioning that most B&W and Color films are built to cover the same dynamic range. The major difference is that Color is developed in a fixed developer for a fixed time, but people like to experiment with the development of B&W and therefore this similarity is often masked.

PE

I have never been able to get the tonal range with 35mm B&W film that I can with 4X5 sheet film, exposed for the black area Zone 2 or 3 and processed for the zone area 7 or 8. Yes AA used Roman Numerals rather than Arabic, but you get the idea. Using a densimeter and taking reading from the negative, I was able to get a range of about 12 f/stops most of the time using Tri-X film. My problem was the photographic paper just didn't have the tonal range I wanted most of the time. I visited Ansel Adams, Looked at his prints, and talked to him about development. Exposure I understood just fine having started with an 8X10 view camera and a Aktinometer for exposure. But converting it to a Black and White Print was the real problem. I couldn't even come close with some one else doing my processing for me. I won 4 blue ribbons using the zone system with the Professional Photographers of America competitions before I quit submitting prints. They had the tone range I wanted, but I worked hard for it too. Hope this helps a little.

westevenssr,

Welcome to APUG. I don't find scenes with 12 f/stops of range usually, I've been seeing mostly 7 stops. Maybe 9 or 10 stops if you count blacks to whites.

If you want to talk and reminisce, you could come down the coast of California. Mary and Jim Alinder have a gallery near Point Arena and many of Ansel Adams' prints are hanging on display. Not only do you get to see the prints, you get to talk with a couple who knew him well.

film_guy said:

Anyone know the dynamic range of B&W films like Tri-X, BW400CN and XP2 Super? And how does one maximize the huge dynamic range properties of B&W film?

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Perhaps 14 stops. Somewhat difficult to know with the usual 21 step wedge (which only goes to 10 stops). I'm not sure about what you mean "maximize" this. Unless you include specular reflections and light sources in your photography, a usual pictorial scene does not produce 14 stops on the film plane with most common lenses.

Because of how I work, I often find wide scene brightness ranges. This one measured about 16 stops from under the desk to the sunlit wall outside (if your monitor isn't carefully set up you might miss a lot of what's happening at both end of the scale) . There was plenty of wall detail that I chose not to print down too darkly, too: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdarnton/6929081535/in/dateposted-public/

Tri-X will record lots of range, but conventionally printing such negs needs a lot of burning and dodging. The zone system doesn't really help with this type of subject; if you tried something like the zone system methods to compress the range into something that was easily printable, the results would just look flat, especially local values with small variations, such as the face. I work from film negatives, but print digitally, where this type of problem is easier to deal with, using a lot of local adjustments.

Anyway, regarding range, the film is not the problem--it's got plenty more than zone system users can ever figure out how to use.