I think I understand the cause of the issue I am having. I was shooting in a forest under overcast conditions and I placed my zone III in the shadows where I wanted to see some detail (right under the central root towards the top of the rock). My exposure worked out to be 30 seconds with FP4+ that I rate at 80, due to reciprocity failure my adjusted exposure was 156 seconds so I did a 2 1/2 minute exposure. Zone III turned out about perfect but the lighter components within the image seem to be way overexposed. From what I understand that is because the brighter areas are less affected by reciprocity failure than the darker areas. I didn't realize how severe this problem was till I took a look at the negative. In the future I can try and cut my development time down but Steve Simmons thinks that FP4+ expands well but doesn't contract well. I'm developing with D76 1:1 in a Jobo 3010 on a Beseler motor base with a 5 minute presoak so my developing time is only 5 minutes. My question is, should I move to HP5+ for a couple stops more speed since that will give me more breathing room before I have to deal with this degree of reciprocity failure? I'd love to try Acros but it seems to be REALLY expensive since it only comes in quickloads.
The images are shown below:
The first is an unmanipulated scan from my 4990 with Silverfast Ai
The second was 2 stops less exposure at the scanning step with Silverfast Ai
The third image was made from the second scan with a simple level and more complicated curves adjustment in CS3
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Scott Kathe
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