I have been away from shooting for several months and just now have had the opportunity to get started again. I am having serious problems and am not sure of the answer. I shot several portraits in the forest with bright sun, but dappled sunlight in the late afternoon....just what I wanted.
I used a Pentax Spotmeter V and took a reading of the young man's cheek and found a value of 12. I placed that on Zone VI. I checked my spotmeter against my Nikon 800 and they seem pretty close. I took the shot at f8 for 1/60 second.
I am shooting a TOYO Field camera 4X5. I have Arista 200 iso edu. I used Rodinal 1:50. I developed normally at 10 minutes.
The result was an extremely overexposed negative. To get an 8X10 print that is even remotely acceptable (and really not usable) I had to expose at f22 for six seconds at a contrast level of 5. There is no detail in the negative shadows. The entire negative and resulting print is very grey and flat.
The film was about 2 years old and the paper about the same. The chemicals were freshly mixed.
The resulting face is not terrible, but the shadows are murky and grey rather then the desired rich black. There is a fair amount of grain visible. I am printing on pearl RC.
Any ideas? Thanks
Alexis
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