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ryanmills
3-Mar-2013, 18:42
Little sanity check. If your keeping a negative in the developer too long it would yield a very black neg (over exposed print)? Is that correct?

Erik Larsen
3-Mar-2013, 20:01
Not necessarily over exposed, but probably overdeveloped with too much contrast to effectively print well. It will be obvious if you overdeveloped during the printing stage as you will have a difficult time putting tone in the highlights. An old "rule of thumb" is that you should be able to just read news print through the highlights of the negative. If you can't you can be assured that you over developed or over exposed or both.
Erik

Light Guru
4-Mar-2013, 00:49
Little sanity check. If your keeping a negative in the developer too long it would yield a very black neg (over exposed print)? Is that correct?

Read this.
http://www.ephotozine.com/article/assessing-negatives-4682

Mark Barendt
4-Mar-2013, 04:24
The simplest way tell is to print from the negative.

If it takes a soft grade paper to print nicely then you could have used less developing.

If it prints nicely on grade 2 then your developing was pretty normal

If it needs a hard paper grade the developing could be extended.

The actual density is also affected by exposure so it is very possible to get a very thick or thin negative even with the right amount of development.

Mark Barendt
4-Mar-2013, 04:28
Oh forgot to say negatives that are overdeveloped or that have had lots of camera exposure typically require more than normal exposure in an enlarger.

C_Remington
4-Mar-2013, 07:00
Not necessarily over exposed, but probably overdeveloped with too much contrast to effectively print well. It will be obvious if you overdeveloped during the printing stage as you will have a difficult time putting tone in the highlights. An old "rule of thumb" is that you should be able to just read news print through the highlights of the negative. If you can't you can be assured that you over developed or over exposed or both.
Erik

No

Exactly the opposite. Think about.

Brian Ellis
4-Mar-2013, 07:03
I assume you're talking about black and white film. If so, over-development alone wouldn't usually produce a completely "black" negative. Increased development time doesn't increase the density of a negative uniformly. The shadow areas of the scene (i.e. the thin areas of the negative, areas that are supposed to be dark in the print) tend to be fully developed roughly a third of the way through development. Developing for too long a time would tend to produce a negative in which the highlights and, to a somewhat lesser extent the midtones, were too dense (black) but the shadow areas should look more or less o.k. if over-development is the only problem (i.e. the in-camera exposure was correct).

In theory the way to tell whether a negative that's too dense somewhere has been overexposed or overdeveloped or both is that if the shadows (thin areas of the negative, dark areas of the scene and the print) look o.k. but the highlights and to some lesser extent the midtones are too dense (i.e. too dark) you've overdeveloped. If the shadows are too dense (i.e. areas of the negative that should be thin aren't) but the highlights look o.k. you've overexposed. If the negative is too dense everywhere you've both overexposed and overdeveloped. That's the theory. I always found it hard to apply in practice.

I'm not sure what you mean by " . . . a very black neg (over exposed print)?" A very black negative would produce a print that was too light (i.e. everything looks too white or bright).

Erik Larsen
4-Mar-2013, 17:23
No

Exactly the opposite. Think about.

Damn, I've been doing it wrong all these years:-)

cyrus
5-Mar-2013, 11:19
over-development means that the dense areas on the negative continue to get marginally darker and darker, and lose the detail they may have contained. The less dense areas in the negative should remain about the same. This results in a lot of contrast.

If you over-develop an over-exposed neg, you'll end up with a negative which is far too dense and lacking detail in the highlights of the print. It won't have much contrast.

ic-racer
5-Mar-2013, 21:14
Little sanity check. If your keeping a negative in the developer too long it would yield a very black neg (over exposed print)? Is that correct?

An overdeveloped negative will still print too contrasty on your softest (least contrasty) paper.
An underdeveloped negative will print too dull on your hardest (most contrasty) paper.

If you overexpose the negative (place the highlights on the shoulder) the whites will be light gray (but not white) when the shadow and middle values are printed to look good.

If you underexpose the negative (place the shadow off the curve) the shadows will be dark gray (but not black) when the highlights and middle values are printed to look good.

Jim Andrada
8-Mar-2013, 09:08
Newsprint???? What's that? Maybe you mean that you should hold the negative up to the iPad where you're reading the news?????????

Just kidding, but it's getting to where it isn't a joke. I read an article about a professor at Northeastern U in Boston who tracks how many students have ever read a print newspaper - it's been just about zero for a few years now. And yes, I read it online!

Wonder how we're supposed to wrap fish in an iPad that's displaying yesterdays news? Or use the mobile version of the old Sears catalog for - oh well, 'nuff said.