How much to develop

[Raffay]

Hello,

Today I took a shot of some trees, on my meter the shadows were 1.4 and the brightest area was showing 5.6. I exposed t-max 400 at 320 and gave a one stop over exposure. I develop in D76 stock, what is your suggestion on how long should I develop, the regular 7.5 minutes or any other combo because of the shadow areas and the highlights.

Cheers

Raffay

[polyglot]

Assuming those readings are stops (EV), you have an SBR of 5.6-1.4=4.2 stops, which is basically normal (5 is typical), so you would use normal development as recommended by the film manufacturer. It's pretty dark though!

You typically place the shadows at -2, which means you're exposing at about EV3 (1.4+2 = 3.4 for an exposure at EI400. An EV3 exposure is about 0.5 stop slower, so that's effectively EI280). EV3 on 400 is about 2s f/8 or equivalent. Don't forget reciprocity failure if you're stopping down further.

The scene is a little flat so you might end up printing it at a slightly higher grade (2.5 or 3) but it will be fine. You could increase development slightly, but you don't need to at all in this case and I personally wouldn't. If you've done some BTZS experimentation with your film and development processes, you could consider developing somewhere between N and N+1 depending on how you want it to look.

[ic-racer]

That is a pretty narrow subject brightlness range. You might need increase your normal development by 25% or more if you want to print it from black to white without having to use #4 or #5 paper. Otherwise maybe it is a scene to be printed with all grays, in which case just develop it for your usual time. Only you know.

[Raffay]

107719
Final result...

[Jim Noel]

" I exposed t-max 400 at 320 and gave a one stop over exposure"
If you did this you exposed at an EI of 160. If this gives you the exposure you like, why not just set your meter at 160?