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12,800 ISO Ilford HP5
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Jan 8, 2019 04:48:30   #
lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA
 
VTMatwood wrote:
I am interested in where this goes.

Question: HP5 is an ASA 400 film if I recall. You pushed this to 12,800 equivalent in developing?


Perhaps developed in cool Ethanol for 259,200 minutes (6 months).

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Jan 8, 2019 04:53:05   #
lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA
 
E.L.. Shapiro wrote:
This is interesting and if it is actually practicable, it does go against a theory I have adhered to for many years when using film. My practice for fine gran and maximized acutance was to cut down on wet time, avoid emulsion shock due to temperature differentials and process with "clinical" care as to agitation, hypo clearing and drying. Although I did employ the zone system, this particular methodology was not part of the original method. I learned it form photographer Mike Tatum, back in the early 70s. He was offering workshops in fine gran darkroom procedures, sponsored by the Honeywell folks when they were importing Pentax cameras and produced a line of stainless steel processing tanks.

Mike was routinely applying the zone system to 35mm photography and producing large prints with the quality of medium format and even close to 4x5 quality. The theory of mixing chemistry with distilled water, minimizing wet time, monitoring the pH of stop baths, not using over concentrated fixers or avoiding over-immersion in stop and clearing baths were to negate a minor degree of reticulation (emulsion shifting) that occurs by not observing theses important precautions. It proved to make the difference in tight grain structure, and significantly more sharpness.

As far as film speed- I seldom pushed beyond 1200 with film like Tri-x and went to 100 with Panatomic-X. I use a number of different developers- Acufine, Ethol UFG, and a few home brews and an altered D-76 formula. Pyro- for portraiture! I had mixed up a few "dynamite" formulas and use compensating developers with auto-stop characteristics.

NOW, for black cat in a coalmine at midnight" situations, I did push more. I could get away up to 3200 (on Tri-X) with in low scene contrasts. Once I got to 3200+, especially in contrasty lighting, shadow detail began to suffer and grain became more problematic. If I ever had to go to 12,800, nowadays, I think I would stick to digital and live with whatever noise resulted.

You mention care in mixing. Does that refer to sequence of chemicals and mixing technique- care as to not causing too much aeration or over-saturation etc. or danger due to chemicals of a hazardous, toxic or highly corrosive nature?

A 1.5 hour developing time might entail a hardener such as Potassium Alum that I used in the past in high temperature circumstances- theses were tropical developer formulas.

I suppose there is still a niche market for traditional darkroom chemistry of a new and different kind. Somewhere in my "achieves" I may still have my Photo-Lab Index with all kinds of exotic formulas and there was a "Cookbook" produced by Ilford .There is an outfit called the Photographers Formulary, they stock some off- beat stuff, antiquated formulas for special toners etc. Nowadays they still sell a nice line of darkroom chemicals. Check them out- you may get some ideas for packaging and marketing etc. I don't remember anythg for pushing to 12,800- coud be unique. Manufacturing, packaging and promotion may require quite an investment- good to do the marketing research first!

Good luck!
This is interesting and if it is actually practica... (show quote)


I'm pretty sure I have a copy of the "Photo-Lab Index"!

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Jan 8, 2019 05:19:44   #
rpavich Loc: West Virginia
 
selmslie wrote:
Sounds like memories of Fred Picker...

Depending on how you set up the scan, you can get the same effect by setting the black point to the film edge density and pick a white point wherever you find the densest part of the image. Or you can adjust the scan afterwards in PP by following the same steps.

Either way, the image's contrast will increase which is what we might expect fro such a low exposure.


I think that's where I got the term, not sure where the idea came from; probably right back to him.

I just know that showing a scan of a neg doesn't say much about the neg itself. You can work magic with a scanned negative but a proper proof tells the tale.

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Jan 8, 2019 06:02:05   #
Crombie
 
Okay,very good idea and I'll do as you suggest.

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Jan 8, 2019 07:18:00   #
Crombie
 
Sorry having an issue attaching the file.



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Jan 8, 2019 07:22:11   #
rpavich Loc: West Virginia
 
Crombie wrote:
Sorry having an issue attaching the file.


Ok...can you see how the clear part of the film is very light as compared to the sprocket holes?

For a properly exposed print where black is really black they should be right at the sprocket hole tone...I shouldn't be able to tell where the sprocket holes are.

Can you do just the opposite to make that happen?

(and also just take a photo of the negative on a light table?)

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Jan 8, 2019 07:23:02   #
selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA
 
Crombie wrote:
Sorry having an issue attaching the file.

Note the sprocket holds.

The clear film between the holes should be just as dark as the holes but you might still see the edges of the holes themselves.

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Jan 8, 2019 08:56:23   #
selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA
 
selmslie wrote:
Note the sprocket holds.

The clear film between the holes should be just as dark as the holes but you might still see the edges of the holes themselves.

Here is what we have in mind.

Note that the tonality between black and white is still continuous and effective although you might want to brighten the mid-tones in the second image.

An incident light reading is aiming to produce a middle gray. So is the camera's reflected reading. The extra contrast in the second image is just the result of the lighting ratio.

Both images are fine.

Black between the sprocket holes, white in the oval above the hat.
Black between the sprocket holes, white in the ova...

Black between the sprocket holes, white in the paper in the table.
Black between the sprocket holes, white in the pap...

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Jan 8, 2019 08:56:58   #
Crombie
 
Hi,

This neg has surprisingly low contrast which is way better than blocked highlights with vacant shadow detail. You'll notice the type on the papers is sharp and fairly well defined, and how about the lack of mushy grain.

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Jan 8, 2019 09:10:25   #
selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA
 
Crombie wrote:
Hi,

This neg has surprisingly low contrast which is way better than blocked highlights with vacant shadow detail. You'll notice the type on the papers is sharp and fairly well defined, and how about the lack of mushy grain.

Grain actually enhances the sense of sharpness.

At this magnification you really can't see grain but we might if you checked [x] (store original) and uploaded each image.

One of the problems with developers like Microdol that smooth out the grain is that they dissolve some of the silver before it gets developed. The result is loss of detail in the shadows and reduced film speed as measured at the film base+fog. Developers like Rodinal don't contain sulfides or other solvents so they produce grainier but sharper images.

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Jan 8, 2019 09:11:39   #
rpavich Loc: West Virginia
 
selmslie wrote:
Here is what we have in mind.

Note that the tonality between black and white is still continuous and effective although you might want to brighten the mid-tones in the second image.

An incident light reading is aiming to produce a middle gray. So is the camera's reflected reading. The extra contrast in the second image is just the result of the lighting ratio.

Both images are fine.

Did you achieve that via black point and white point controls?

You should have only used the "exposure" slider which really tells the tale.

The issue is; what does the negative look like and how does it print using minimum print time for max black?

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Jan 8, 2019 09:12:07   #
rpavich Loc: West Virginia
 
Crombie wrote:
Hi,

This neg has surprisingly low contrast which is way better than blocked highlights with vacant shadow detail. You'll notice the type on the papers is sharp and fairly well defined, and how about the lack of mushy grain.



that's why I'd love to see the neg instead of a scan of it.

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Jan 8, 2019 09:28:40   #
Crombie
 
This is not a scan, it's a photograph of it on a light table, totally straight out the camera.

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Jan 8, 2019 09:33:04   #
rpavich Loc: West Virginia
 
Crombie wrote:
This is not a scan, it's a photograph of it on a light table, totally straight out the camera.


But it's been inverted. it's not SOOC.

Has anything else been adjusted?

Can you take a shot SOOC and not invert it?

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Jan 8, 2019 10:14:56   #
selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA
 
rpavich wrote:
Did you achieve that via black point and white point controls?

You should have only used the "exposure" slider which really tells the tale.

The issue is; what does the negative look like and how does it print using minimum print time for max black?

As I suggested, black point for the film edge like Picker's proper proof. That should make the darkest part of the image is as black as possible.

I then adjusted the overall dynamic range range of the image to make a specific highlight as white as possible by using the white point.

The result is that the gray tones simply fall arbitrarily between those two extremes. If I also pick a tone where I want middle gray to fall I can get a different rendering of the mid-tones (see below).

But there is a problem with the way that this image has been digitized. The film edge between the sprocket holes should be uniformly black but it is not. A scan or contact print would have rendered the film edge uniformly dark.

A scan would have also revealed whether there is any visible grain.



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