Originally Posted by
Ken Lee
Well I'll be a monkey's uncle !
TMY at ISO 250, Divided Pyrocat HD, 5 min, 75 degrees, 1:10.
I placed the wood on the chair on Zone II - III, and let the rest go where it may. The inside walls fell on Zone V, the grass in the yard outside fell on Zone XI ! The clouds in the sky fell on Zone... XIV !
Another interior with deep shadows and full window-light from outdoors. The statue on the table, I placed on Zone III. The carpeting on the stairs fell 8 zones higher, and the white paint on the steps another 2 zones beyond that. Zone 13 is way beyond what any sane photographer would waste a sheet of film and still expect to capture useable texture. I didn't know that the film could hold that many zones.
Foreground in the shade, clouds lit by full sun. No filter was used. The fence was placed on III, and the clouds fell as high as Zone XI. So what ? Maybe a yellow filter would have made the clouds look more dimensional, but the brightness range was irrelevant.
All of these negatives scanned so easily, I had to increase contrast to make them feel like light. The amazing thing to me, is that there was no need for stand, semi-stand, flash, dilution, HDR merging, blending, multiple exposures... no incantations or rituals of any kind !
Watching the development process with an Infra Red monocular, this process looks like Pt/Pd: the images just pop out when you place the film into bath B. I haven't had this much (photographic) fun in a long time !
Next time, I will give more continuous agitation: these negatives have a slightly mottled look. Five minutes isn't a lot of time, especially when you tray-develop a lot of sheets at the same time as I do. I will increase the dilution to 1:20, and lengthen the time a bit in each developer.
Thanks so much for sharing this technique ! It's been around for a long time, but it took me until now to pick it up.
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