Shooting/processing challenge.

[Milton Tierney]

Here is the set up. I’m in a old abandon brick building and shooting a doorway with trees outside. The Sky is overcast. The spot meter used is a Pentax Zone VI Digital. The outside trees leaves in the doorway are metered at 11.2, the darkest shadow area I want detail the meter shows 0. Trees placed in zone V or VI and the shadow area in zone III. Film Tmax-100 dev. in HC-110, (why? that’s all I have to use).

How would you shoot and develop this scene? :D

[williamtheis]

tricky... may I suggest that before you develop you give the entire scene a zone i or zone II preexposure before developing!!!! here's how it works. use a transluscent piece of polyethelene and meter to make a zone II, use it as a filter and reload your film into and expose it. Now you think: hey you just fogged the film! but look what happens. The higher exposures are not touched (zone VI has an extra 1/7 stop) but the low levels are sensitized so that any detail in those zone 0 show. It does increase the zone III areas by 1/3 stop (do you work to better than 1/3 stop?).

the cost is that you have a higher film base plus fog and makes a little longer exposure time to print through it.

after preexposure, you process normally. Read more in Ansel Adam's books

[Milton Tierney]

Now you mention it. I remember now that I read that in one of A. Adams books about 20+ years ago. I totally forgot about it. The place is only 30mins away and it would make a good challenge. This is the first time I’ve come across such a wide exposure range. Next time I go there I’ll shoot several sheets and do some experimenting. Thanks.

[Ken Lee]

See this recent thread (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=52913), about Two-Bath developers. It contains several illustrative photos that will blow your mind. At the bottom of the thread, you'll see a photo made with the camera looking out from within a cave, onto a scene with trees - much like the challenge you describe.

Two-Bath developers make this situation trivial to handle. You can place the shadows where you want, and let the high values fall well up into the stratosphere, like Zone XV. Miraculously, they end up with full texture.

No need for stand or semi-stand development. No extreme dilution. No secret hand-shakes or pass-words. :)

It's so simple, it's actually laughable. If I hadn't tried this myself, I would have never believed it.

[williamtheis]

one last thing: ansel says to pre expose the image with zone I or Zone II and then make the exposure. I have found that you can do the pre exposure after the main exposure with no discernable difference. Nice thing is no special developer... just develop it along with the rest of the negatives if you have a drum. Even works with color film! (although the shadows look "milky" in a slide--remember this is for PRINTS not for viewing on the light box--which go away in the print.)