Zone System & Reciprocity Failure

[Ken Burns]

Andrew:

Yes, the situation you described is most definitely going to have an excessive range of overall brightness. In this type of situation, exposure will be extremely critical since any underexposure at all will result in total loss of shadow details. I would definitely advise basing the exposure on Zone III areas or lower. Such exposure will defintely dictate compensations for reciprocity failure. With some careful analysis of the particular situation you are dealing with, you should be able to accurately predict the ultimate Zone placement of the highlights.

Whether you shoot on a cloudy day or a sunlit day could turn out to be quite critical in determining you success. If you work on a sunlit day it is quite possible that N-1 or even N-2 development could still be quite excessive. Have you worked with any manipulations in your development techniques? Agitation, dilutions, etc?

[Andrew Pell]

Ken,

I've always used ID-11 at 1:1 dilution and developed for 9 mins (10 mins standard time) to try to reduce the highlights. Other than that I tend to stick to the indicated agitation periods / durations and temperatures.

I'd seen a report or two about the Barry Thornton DiXactol single / two bath developer but haven't tried it. On his instructions he mentions that N+1, N-1 isn't easy to control via time due to chemical exhaustion and to use dilution instead. This could be another option for me to investigate at some point.

As for the sunlight level, I sometimes can't win. The best time is when it's either very foggy or throwing it down with rain. The problem then is that in the larger cathedrals, people come in for shelter and long exposures are a pain as there's too many people around. As I have to work for a living (not in photography) I can't get to places during the week when it would be quieter.

Andrew

[Robert Haury]

I was thinking about your subject matter. Have you considered trying some double exposures? Take the first picture in daylight and metre for the hihglights (the windows) then wait for night fall and do the second of the interior (lit by interior lighting) You would probably still have some reciprocity failure to deal with but you should get a much more normal contrast range. Rob

[james mickelson]

Try some pre-exposure and place the shadows on Z4 because the shadows will lose density when you contract your development. Use a low contrast developer or dilute developer. You can also use an old emulsion film such as fp4 or TriX and use stand development to try and build your shadows to their fullest extent while keeping your highlight densities under control. On top of that try making a contrast mask for those pesky windows and then print at a higher contrast to help bring out the detail in the shadowed alter. You can also use some selenium toner on the shadows to help build density so the contrast range between the highlights and shadows is lessened. Or try PMK Pyro which will develope with a stain which will self mask some of the shadows. You can also bleach some of the dense highlights on the neg. But I would go to sheet film and process accordingly. I use a lot of pre-exposure to help tame highlights when the contrast is +1 or less. But if you are going to use a development strategy that calls for decreased development or stand development, be sure to give the neg extra exposure to protect those important shadows. You've got 10 usable stops of curve so use it. james

[Andrew Pell]

Rob, I'd never really considered double exposure due to the logistics of a) being able to stay in a cathedral until after dark (unless you go in November etc where closing time is after dark) b) having to leave the camera set up in position for so long without it either being moved (probably having the tripod kicked) or c) sombody trying to steal the camera. As I'm not a professional, I'm not able to pay to keep these places open to take a single exposure :-) but thanks for the idea. Another downside to this is the actual internal lighting of some of these places - it's worse than no lighting due to the harsh shadows and hotspots etc. At some places I've had to ask them to turn the lights off to give me a chance to even up the distribution. The people then think you are weird by wanting the lights off to take a picture.

James, One of the ways I've been trying to "rescue" negs is to use pre- flashing of the paper and split grade printing but it's not ideal. Were you meaning pre-exposing the film intead? You've given me a lot of ideas with the other things to try. My dad always sticks to FP4+ and I tend to think his negs are grainier and flatter compared to the Delta 100 but it looks like I'll have to swap films. Unfortunately he has the same problems with contrast as well but his negs look better to start with. His were also possibly flatter due to the old lenses he was using unlike my Bronica ones.

Andrew

[Ken Burns]

Andrew:

These types of situations you are dealing with are some of the toughest ones to be found. The dark areas inside the church suffer from extreme problems with reciprocity law failure while the highlights in the windows do not suffer reciprocity problems at all. The areas of the negative that have recorded the darker areas of the church interior probably need all the exposure and development they can get while the highlights of the windows need as little exposure and development as possible.

The pre-exposure (or post-exposure) that has already been mentioned will help quite a bit with the additional exposure needed in the shadow areas. For development, you might want to consider using a highly compensating developer along with techniques that further the compensating effects. I like to work with highly diluted developers along with minimal agitation. One technique that I use is called the 1:4:1:4:1:4:1. You develop the film in a highly diluted compensating developer (such as Edwal FG7 diluted 1+31 with water only) for 1 minute with only 10 seconds of agitation. At the end of the minute in the developer, the film is gingerly transferred to water where it remains for 4 minutes without agitation. The film is then returned to the developer where the cycle begins again. In extremely contrasty situations, the last minute in the developer can be omitted. In situations that aren't quite contrasty enough, another 1:4 cycle can be added.

This method has worked quite nicely for me in situations similar to yours. I would recommend a little experimentation before using it seriously to get the details worked out right. This approach, though it works nicly with roll film, is easiest to work with if you use sheet films that can be developed individually.

[Andrew Pell]

Ken,

Thanks for your suggestions - it seems as though you have the same problems.

I don't know whether Edwal FG7 is available in this country (England) as it seems to be a US manufactured / sold item. I'll have to try and find an alternative unless you know of one. We don't have anything like the choice you have (assuming you're in the US.) Either that or I'll have to try tapping up a few of the chemical wizards I know and see if they can concoct an alternative.

I suppose whilst I'm experimenting, rollfilm might be a bit easier to handle as it would stay in the tank all the time to hopefully avoid damaging the emulsion I presume you mean rather than transferring the sheets between different baths etc.

From your 1:4 cycle, should the last bath be a developer one or water or doesn't it matter as the film is going to be put in stop-bath anyway? I guess it's a suck it and see thing found out with trials.

Andrew

[Ken Burns]

Andrew:

Yeah, I'm over here on this side of the Atlantic. I'm not familiar with the chemicals and suppliers you have to pick from over on your side. I would think that Tetenal would have something that is fairly equivalent to FG7. Maybe Paterson would too. I've even heard of some people using Kodak's D76 for the process, but I've never tried it myself with D76.

Basically you need to use a developer that will become exhausted rather quickly in the hightlight areas of the negative but will still provide full development in the shadow areas. Of course, that is exactly what a compensating developer does. Many developers will do just that if they are highly diluted. Even HC110 will do it if it is diluted enough. However, you need to be careful that there is enough of the working developer for the quantity of film you are developing.

As far as the 1:4 cycle goes, it doesn't really matter which is the last step, developer or water. I have found that it takes at least three full 1:4 cycles, but in some cases you might need more cycles than that. You,ll need to do a little experimenting to fine tune it to your particular situation. As a matter of fact, with a little careful metering and note-taking you could probably come up with a system of matching different scene brightness ranges to the required number of 1:4 cycles.

Good Luck!

[james mickelson]

Andrew, Try pre-exposing the film. You will boost the shadows enough to lessen having to use such long exposures for reciprocity departure. Also by using the middle part of the curve(zone4 for the shadows) you won't have such a hard time in printing the negs. Using zone 3 and then trying to keep the shadow densities intact is hard. Using zone 4 or even zone 5 gives you some nice shadow densities to work with when you go to print. Now all you need is to keep the highlight densities from going to high which can be accomplished by using either a water bath with old emulsion type films or compensating developers with delta or Tmax films. There are myriad ways to do this. Divided d76 or rodinal at high dilutions will work fine. James

[Andrew Pell]

James, I once tried pre-exposing the film with the Bronica. It made a slight difference to the shadows but only slight. I found I could get more useful results from pre-exposing / fogging the paper and it was a lot less hassle over having to rewind the roll film etc. I suppose it's better to do the film as it makes printing easier as opposed to having the same contrasty negs and trying to rescue them via the paper. I'll have to get hold of some sheet film and try that.

I've just developed my first roll out of the LF camera tonight using zone system metering (shadows placed on z3) and my usual developing sequence. Apart from the pictures not being sharp (as I said, I'm new to LF!), the density doesn't look as bad as some of the ones I've done previously although they aren't the most contrasty of subjects. There could be some hope :-)

Ken, I'll look around over here for some developer to try something different to ID-11 if I can't get any joy with weaker dilutions.

Andrew