Quote Originally Posted by Pere Casals View Post
Traditional films have a natural tonal compression in the highlights from shoulder, if we develop with an staining developer then the stain+VC combination adds an additional tonal compression in the highlights, so we may require to burn highlights with a higher filter grade. The film shoulder + the Pyro/VC compressions may be too much when added.

A bit it's contradictory wanting the TMax linearity in the highlights and later having to use a Pyro+VC paper to emulate traditional films that have that shoulder in the highlights yet.
You state here that Pyro + traditional film may add too much compression, while also stating it makes no sense to use on TMX, so in essence Pyro is a bad developer, and yet so many people use it as their only developer, and make excellent (technical) work.

I have a simple question for you. On FP4 or something similar, let's say we exposure the shadows generously to get them out of the toe. Traditional "thick negative" exposure technique. At some point the upper values start to get compressed. I get that. At what point does the shoulder level out to being completely flat, therefore having NO possibility of burning anything down other than a flat, single tone, regardless of development technique? And, how does that compare to a scene with a full range of tonality - let's say, a gentle forest scene with angular but soft light from sun and clouds on a good day, with also a nice waterfall that when shot will have a rich variety of very high values that are very much higher than the surrounding area?