Developing FP4+ and Pyrocat HD; hold hilites but gain more shadow detail

[gevalia]

All,

Just looking for a little help on this. I had a few FP4+ 4x5 sheets to develop. They were of high contrast locations - Pikes Peak. I developed them in Pyrocat HD for 11 minutes at 68 degrees (my time/temp for low to normal contrast scenes). They held the highlights nicely (snow on mountains, clouds) but lack in shadow detail (distant pine trees). The exposure is spot on. What could I have done in development to gain more shadow detail while not blowing out the highlights?

FP4+ would not have been my choice for these shots but it was all I had loaded.

Thanks,
Ron

[gevalia]

Never mind. Re-read the thread on 2-bath Pyro-HD. Ah, the things we forget.

[Ken Lee]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but there seem to be 2 basic approaches to handling extreme contrast with development, and we might want to choose one or the other, depending on how we have exposed the negatives. Better still, we can expose the negatives with development in mind.

With Divided or Two-Bath Formulas, we overexpose the high values. By virtue of the 2-bath process, the extreme high values are controlled. It might be more appropriate to call this a "restrain the highlights" approach.

With Stand development, we underexpose the shadows. During prolonged immersion, development proceeds in the low values, while highlight development is soon exhausted. It might be more appropriate to call this a "rescue the shadows" approach.

Great images can be made with both methods.

[Richard Wasserman]

I would second what Ken has so cogently written. Increase the time and reduce agitation. There are several methods to do this, so a bit of testing is required. FP4 and Pyrocat is a wonderful and extremely versatile combination.

[Paul Metcalf]

Well, what filtration did you use during the exposure? If you used a yellow/red filter (minus-blue) with sunlight, then you effectively reduced the exposure in the green pine trees but kept the detail in the clouds/sky. This is a common problem, Adams talks about it in one of his books (The Negative IIRC). You can try using a green filter, it will still give you the detail in the highlights but won't cut the exposure in things that are green, like distant pine trees. Getting around extreme mountain contrast scenes with development is difficult in my experience.

[Bob McCarthy]

I went to another school. How can you say exposure is spot on??

Expose to provide adequate density in the shadows

Development to create printible density in highlights

Sounds to me like you underexposed the negative.......development by shortening time -or- stand -or-two bath -or- whatever is all about controlling highlights.


To me you underexposed the scene and likely will never get any detail in the shadows, developer really can't help you if you don't put enough light on the film in the first place.

bob

[Jim Noel]

Good answer Bob!

[sanking]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but there seem to be 2 basic approaches to handling extreme contrast with development, and we might want to choose one or the other, depending on how we have exposed the negatives. Better still, we can expose the negatives with development in mind.

With Divided or Two-Bath Formulas, we overexpose the high values. By virtue of the 2-bath process, the extreme high values are controlled. It might be more appropriate to call this a "restrain the highlights" approach.

With Stand development, we underexpose the shadows. During prolonged immersion, development proceeds in the low values, while highlight development is soon exhausted. It might be more appropriate to call this a "rescue the shadows" approach.

Great images can be made with both methods.

Bob addressed the question of shadow detail, which of course depends more on exposure than method of development.

Both two-bath development and stand development are viable methods to control highlight density. I would choose one or the other taking into account the following considerations.

1. Two-bath development is my choice whenever I am developing film for scanning in circumstances where it would be impractical to record the subject contrast conditions. This would apply to medium format film where any given roll would contain negatives that were exposed in varying subject brightness range. It would also apply to large format film where the conditions of exposure made it difficult or impractical to record the SBR. In two-bath development the film will develop to a certain highlight contrast, and no more. One of the advantages of this method is that it is not necessary to take any notes in the field -- just expose for the shadow densities and two-bath development will limit highlight density.

2. In stand development we can control the contrast (CI) of the negative with time of development as in regular BTZS or Zone type development. Shorter development times give less contrast, longer times more contrast. I use this method when developing film intended for printing directly with the negative. With this method you will need to record the SBR and save this information in some way with the film so that you know how long develop it to reach the desired CI.

Sandy King