Newbie Needs help on B&W film developing...

[Neal Chaves]

I appreciate all of the feedback. I'll keep at it and see what comes out. Thanks...

They don't "come out", we make them. Suggestions below will work for any common film/developer combination. You don't need full sheets of 8X10 for the first part. You can use 4X5s of the same type or cut your 8X10 into 4 4X5s.



Years ago I learned the method to find the correct developing time and EI for any film. I source was an article by William Mortensen. Mortensen wrote some excellent books and articles about basic sensitometry. The last time I did this test was when I abandoned Tri-X and switched to HP5+ due to cost about five years ago. I proceed as follows.

I set up my trays with my favorite developer HC110B (1:31). I pull out a sheet from the package in the dark. and then when the package is sealed again I turn on the room lights. This part of the test is done under the lights. I cut the sheet into five strips and mark them 1-5 by punching holes with a paper punch. Lets say the recommended time is 5:00. I want to see 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00 and 7:00, so I throw all the strips into the developer and agitate as usual until 3:00 when I move the No.1 strip over to the stop bath. Then I pull No.2 at 4:00, No.3 at 5:00, etc. I fix, wash and dry the strips as usual. What we are looking for is the best usable film DMax value. Obviously the film has been fully exposed! When strips dry lay down a page of news print on a table in good light. Find the strip through which the news print is barely visible. That's your developing time. Now to find the film speed.

Go outside in unchanging light conditions and expose five sheets and expose one at the manufacturers rating and then the other four at one half a stop and one stop less and one half a stop and one stop more. In the dark, develop them all together for your newly derived time. Contact print them together exposing and developing the paper for maximum usable paper DMax value. Pick out the best-looking contact print and you have your film speed.

Because my 7:00 negative looked the best on the first test, I did the test again with 7:00 as the central developing time and found that 8:00 was indeed too dense. This HP5+ time was the same as the as the developing time I had been using for Tri-X and film speed was also the same, EI400.

Many of the last generation of B&W gurus favored a development time of 5:00 for Tri-X and suggested an EI of 64-100. You can do the above test backwards, developing for 5:00 minutes and finding the film speed. I like 100. The difference between negatives exposed at 100 and developed for 5:00 is quite subtle. Both could be considered "normal" or N negatives. The 100 negative has slightly greater shadow and highlight detail that only a careful, knowledgeable viewer could detect. This slight improvement might not be worthwhile trading for two stops in the field. I do routinely rate HP5+ at 100 under powerful strobe light in the studio and it produces beautiful skin tones.

From here, if you are still with me, you can derive expansion and contraction schemes for both the 100 and 400 "normal negs". I do this by changing dilution rather than time. Make sure you have at least 1 oz. of the concentrated sauce for each 8X10 sheet or equivalent. For contractions I found that 3/4 oz. concentrate to 31 1/4 ozs. H20 yields an N-1 neg at a one stop loss in film speed and 1/2 oz. concentrate to 31 1/2 ozs. H20 yields an N-2 neg at a two stop loss in film speed. For expensions, 1 1/4 oz. of concentrate to 30 3/4 ozs. H20 yields an N+1 neg at a one stop gain in speed and 1 1/2 ozs. concentrate to 30 1/2 ozs. H20 produces an N+2 negative with a two stop gain in speed.

If you look at the chart of Tri-X film speed in Phil Davis' BTZS book you can easily pick out the film speed in HC110B 5:00 as EI 64.

Don't apply reciprosity exposure and development corrections for long exposures (1/2 sec. +) based on published data. Test for yourself and you may be surprised. I wasted a lot of time and effort producing long exposure negatives that were thick and flat. When I finally tested, I found no compensation was required for TXP out to one minute.

[Andrew O'Neill]

Forget about people who say forget about the zone system. Keep it simple. By doing so, it will work well for you. It has for me for the past 25 years.

[macmaster77]

Forget about people who say forget about the zone system. Keep it simple. By doing so, it will work well for you. It has for me for the past 25 years.

Do you meter for the shadow detail and place it in the zone you want, then check your EVs? Thanks!

[macmaster77]

They don't "come out", we make them. Suggestions below will work for any common film/developer combination. You don't need full sheets of 8X10 for the first part. You can use 4X5s of the same type or cut your 8X10 into 4 4X5s.



Years ago I learned the method to find the correct developing time and EI for any film. I source was an article by William Mortensen. Mortensen wrote some excellent books and articles about basic sensitometry. The last time I did this test was when I abandoned Tri-X and switched to HP5+ due to cost about five years ago. I proceed as follows.

I set up my trays with my favorite developer HC110B (1:31). I pull out a sheet from the package in the dark. and then when the package is sealed again I turn on the room lights. This part of the test is done under the lights. I cut the sheet into five strips and mark them 1-5 by punching holes with a paper punch. Lets say the recommended time is 5:00. I want to see 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00 and 7:00, so I throw all the strips into the developer and agitate as usual until 3:00 when I move the No.1 strip over to the stop bath. Then I pull No.2 at 4:00, No.3 at 5:00, etc. I fix, wash and dry the strips as usual. What we are looking for is the best usable film DMax value. Obviously the film has been fully exposed! When strips dry lay down a page of news print on a table in good light. Find the strip through which the news print is barely visible. That's your developing time. Now to find the film speed.

Go outside in unchanging light conditions and expose five sheets and expose one at the manufacturers rating and then the other four at one half a stop and one stop less and one half a stop and one stop more. In the dark, develop them all together for your newly derived time. Contact print them together exposing and developing the paper for maximum usable paper DMax value. Pick out the best-looking contact print and you have your film speed.

Because my 7:00 negative looked the best on the first test, I did the test again with 7:00 as the central developing time and found that 8:00 was indeed too dense. This HP5+ time was the same as the as the developing time I had been using for Tri-X and film speed was also the same, EI400.

Many of the last generation of B&W gurus favored a development time of 5:00 for Tri-X and suggested an EI of 64-100. You can do the above test backwards, developing for 5:00 minutes and finding the film speed. I like 100. The difference between negatives exposed at 100 and developed for 5:00 is quite subtle. Both could be considered "normal" or N negatives. The 100 negative has slightly greater shadow and highlight detail that only a careful, knowledgeable viewer could detect. This slight improvement might not be worthwhile trading for two stops in the field. I do routinely rate HP5+ at 100 under powerful strobe light in the studio and it produces beautiful skin tones.

From here, if you are still with me, you can derive expansion and contraction schemes for both the 100 and 400 "normal negs". I do this by changing dilution rather than time. Make sure you have at least 1 oz. of the concentrated sauce for each 8X10 sheet or equivalent. For contractions I found that 3/4 oz. concentrate to 31 1/4 ozs. H20 yields an N-1 neg at a one stop loss in film speed and 1/2 oz. concentrate to 31 1/2 ozs. H20 yields an N-2 neg at a two stop loss in film speed. For expensions, 1 1/4 oz. of concentrate to 30 3/4 ozs. H20 yields an N+1 neg at a one stop gain in speed and 1 1/2 ozs. concentrate to 30 1/2 ozs. H20 produces an N+2 negative with a two stop gain in speed.

If you look at the chart of Tri-X film speed in Phil Davis' BTZS book you can easily pick out the film speed in HC110B 5:00 as EI 64.

Don't apply reciprosity exposure and development corrections for long exposures (1/2 sec. +) based on published data. Test for yourself and you may be surprised. I wasted a lot of time and effort producing long exposure negatives that were thick and flat. When I finally tested, I found no compensation was required for TXP out to one minute.

Great info. I'll give this a go. Appreciate the input.

[Doremus Scudder]

Do you meter for the shadow detail and place it in the zone you want, then check your EVs? Thanks!

Exactly! Expose for the shadows. Deal with the highlights by development or changing paper contrast grades. That's really all there is to it; the devil is in the details. There are many ways to get a well exposed and developed negative. How precise you want to get with this and which system/method you decide on depends on you and the type of work you do.

Systems for exposure and development tend to be full of tests, specifics and details. I often advocate working the other way: from general to specific. Take a test shot, develop it and evaluate it. If you need more shadow detail, expose more, if your neg is too contrasty to print easily, develop less and vice-versa. Overexposure is rarely a problem with LF negs. Two stops over does nothing more than add density to all parts of the negative; it is still eminently printable. Overdevelopment is usually the problem when blacks are too black and whites are too white.

FWIW, the Zone System doesn't have to be complicated. As I mentioned earlier, it is primarily a visualization tool. Many don't use it as such, they just use it as an exposure/development system. This can be more trouble than it's worth and overly complicated if you go in for all the testing and such. The main advantage to spot metering parts of your scene is getting an idea of how they are going to look in the print. I know what Zone IV will look like, and Zone VI, etc. I can meter my scene and have a pretty good idea of what the print will or can look like. Often, this means I don't bother to make an exposure. For example, a day with bright overcast and dark shadows often results in a blank white sky together with underexposed and flat everything else. I can meter and find this out; my meter helps my visual intuition.

And, you can do away with a lot of ZS testing. The film-speed test, while informative, is not really necessary. It has been shown that the ZS speed point is consistently about a half-stop slower than "box speed." My tests have given me times that are 1/3 to 2/3-stop slower than box speed for all the films I use. Since you're shooting 8x10 and overexposure by a bit isn't really an issue, you can just rate your film 2/3-stop slower than box speed and shoot away. If you overexpose by 1/3-2/3 stop, that's no big deal; consider it a safety margin.

Development times need a bit more attention, but you can still just shoot a scene, keeping good notes and then print your neg on an intermediate contrast grade and see if the print Zones fall where you metered them. If there are large discrepancies, adjust your developing time accordingly. A 20% change in development is approximately equal to a Zone (i.e., N+ or N-, respectively). Missing development time by a Zone or a bit more is usually no big deal if you have paper grades on either side of normal. Many simply find a good time for N and use changes in paper grade to compensate for changing scene contrast.

Bottom line: start simple and general, with a good idea of the basics of how the system works and go from there.

Best,

Doremus

[peter schrager]

Just try and do some tray development
The zone system works fine...in florida you can just expose for the highlights. .everything will fall in place
Use a yellow 8 or 12 filter
Use the longer dilution .it will give you better control over the process..shoot 5 sheets..standardize the the temp and develop from your minimum time increasing by 1 minute for every sheet
I use a scissors to cut the edge of the film so i know which sheet is which...you're all set to go so just do it
Just use the Asa 100 speed. .it'll work fine
Good luck
Peter

[macmaster77]

Just try and do some tray development
The zone system works fine...in florida you can just expose for the highlights. .everything will fall in place
Use a yellow 8 or 12 filter
Use the longer dilution .it will give you better control over the process..shoot 5 sheets..standardize the the temp and develop from your minimum time increasing by 1 minute for every sheet
I use a scissors to cut the edge of the film so i know which sheet is which...you're all set to go so just do it
Just use the Asa 100 speed. .it'll work fine
Good luck
Peter

I appreciate this. I figured it can't be that hard with so many folks doing it. I'm sure once you get in the groove and know what works for your process, everything just moves along. Thanks!

[macmaster77]

This is great. This really boils it down to make it easy. Granted, I've not been doing this for many years like most here, however I felt as if there had to be a way to get started. I've made a note sheet for myself to keep track of the readings. One thing that you said that I think gave me some trouble on my last development was to use 20% for one zone. I used 10%. It's all a learning process but at the end of the day, it's great to work with a different type of camera and craft a photo that at the end of the process I can say "I did that". Thanks again for your input.

[Luis-F-S]

If you don't have a 4x5 camera, get a reducing back so you can use 4x5 film, since the cost is so much less! Do your experimenting on the smaller film size. L

[fralexis]

Macmaster27,

I have been in the same place as you. I have been shooting film for years but LF is a new game. I received so much information on this subject that my head began to swim. I did all the tests and calibrations. Many of those who offered suggestions were very helpful. But before you begin so many technical tests I would urge you to do something just for the fun of it. Take a few sheets of film, shoot it at half the box speed and try to take some good exposure measurements. I simply spot meter the dark shadows and place that at zone 3. Then look at the results. You will be surprised to find some nice photographs. Of course there are countless variables but I advise not to become discouraged by the technical elements. Take some nice photos and then after you have confidence in about 20 shots, start thinking about technical details. My 2 cents.