How to push up mid tones in developmental?

[ic-racer]

Under exposure and over development make mid tones darker than what is usually desired. Go back to the basics. How are you determining exposure?

[ryanmills]

Under exposure and over development make mid tones darker than what is usually desired. Go back to the basics. How are you determining exposure?

I have a L358 ambient light meter. I also use a 5d mark II as a poloroid. I know i need to get a good spot meter but just cant afford one right now. I have done bracketed shots +/- one stop just to see if that was it. I could be messing up another step in development.

Right now its:
Distilled water pre soak two shuffles thru the stack unless one sticks -> Distilled water HC110 (all sorts of diffrent things) -> Ilford stop 3 shuffles thru -> Ilford Rapid fix 1:4 ratio (long soak, 5-6 mins) -> Second Ilford Rapid fix 1:4 ratio (long soak, 5-6 mins) -> Distilled water Kodak Hypo Clear long soak ~10mins -> Rise under tap about 4-5 mins each -> final rinse in distilled with photoflo -> hang dry 3-4 hours

Any areas of concern? The long fix is to help with the sensation layer. Could that be damaging my negs?

[John NYC]

@John NYC Im back in epson scan, any starting point on the best way to adjust the tone. I see I can do both levels and curves, do you normally adjust both for every photo?

I do 90 percent of my scans for b&w by only adjusting in the histogram dialog box. I try to get as full of a tonal range there as I can. I make sure that I have not blown out my highlights and that I have not either made my blacks gray and foggy or the opposite, too black to have any detail... unless that is appropriate in the exposure I made.

I save to a TIFF file, then open in Photoshop, where I will do one or more layer curves to finally adjust the tonality and contrast.

Apart from that workflow, each image is a little different, so I can't really give you a starting point. Some images need very little adjustment, others need more.

[Paul H]

I'll start from the assumption that the negative looks ok - there's shadow, highlight and some detail in the middle.

If using Epson scan, set it to professional mode.

Click on the histogram, and set the outputs to 10 and 245 (or there abouts). Now set the endpoints on the inputs - the black (left) one should be just beyond the left edge of the histogram, the right (white) just beyond the right most point of the histogram. The mid point should be somewhere between 1.00 and 1.25. Set sharpening to low, original size, and scan 2400dpi. Scan as a 16 bit TIFF.

When the scan is complete, open in your image editor and set the levels / curves. That should give you a reasonable starting point. At least that way you should be able to see whether or not it is your developing that is causing problems.

Perhaps you could do us a screen shot of Epson Scan when you've got the histogram up?

[ki6mf]

i think you may need to look at the exposure of your shadows. Meter shadow detain and stop down two stops. Ex just picking numbers here ISO 300 F64 shadow reading of 2 seconds would give a zone 5 reading. Changing stops to 1/2 second gets shadows exposed correctly. You may want to re test -don't worry about making great art for this test find a shadow you can get extremely close to and meter and record shadow reading and expose normally. Stronger agitation and stronger developer -more developer less water will increase highlight on the negative. If the budget allows consider using a dedicated hand held spot meter at all times

[Brian Ellis]

There really isn't much of a way to control the midtones by themselves when you're developing film. You can only control the shadows (by in-camera exposure) and the highlights (by development). The midtones just go along for the ride and look like whatever they look like based on your exposure for the shadows and development for the highlights.

[photobymike]

yea what brian said ....although you can do a little tweaking with filters and some lighting from a reflector

[ic-racer]

I have a L358 ambient light meter. I also use a 5d mark II as a poloroid.

How are you getting you exposure index?