Thanks for the specific explanation Rodinal... but it still sounds like an awfully tedious way to get from Point A to Point B. If it works for you and you're happy with the results, who am I to judge? But I'm not necessarily impressed that Saint Ansel did it sloshing developer around in his stinky ole Stetson cowboy hat. I prefer to be a little more up to date with my own options. HP5 has a somewhat long toe, so I've overexposed just one stop (200 speed) in contrasty situations, or more likely, use it only for moderate contrast scenes. An exception: I once liked overexposing and overdeveloping it in order to significantly increase midtone microtonality and edge effect in PMK, then tamed the result with an unsharp mask when printing. Stunning results, but now I'd rather just use TMY400 to begin with, which has a much steeper toe with better shadow gradation.