Film Testing

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

Andy I don't understand what you mean about not wanting to test your negatives by contact printing them. If you mean you would rather test them by enlargement to a standard, then I would say that is fine as well, but the absolute key to the whole thing is to find that STANDARD which you can repeat every single time you do it so that when you want to vary things you can SEE for yourself what happened using YOUR materials, and YOUR camera, and YOUR light, and YOUR way of doing things. And again, the best standard that I know of is the maximum black from minimum exposure test. That said, the next best VISUAL test is the old tried and true "corner of the white house in sun test" where you expose your film shooting a white house at the corner where one side is in brilliant sunlight and the other side is in shade. YOu make sure that there is something very dark but with good detail on the shade side, and in fact it is better if you have a few things of various darknesses (but with good detail) on that shaded side. meter your dark object for the zone you want it to be in and expose. (or, you could paint a card black, put it in the shade, and meter it for zone 1 and expose) develop normally. print/contact print at the exact time and temp you establsihed for your maximum black/minimum time test. look at the print. ask yourself these questions. did you get good detail in that dark object or did you lose all detail in that dark object, or is it too light (is the black card just a hair lighter than maximum black from minimum time -i.e. zone 1) if there is no detail you need to expose more. if it is too high (not dark enough) you need to expose less. when you get that expsosure right then then look at the detail in the white sun. if there is no detail then you need to develop more. if there is alot of detail but the white looks a little bit gray you need to develop more. Its all there for YOU to decide rather than some densitometer. But again, the key thing is that when you are doing all of this, you have to make sure you have a standard from which to start. What the hell good is testing a negative with a densitometer if you don't actually then print that negative to see what it did on YOUR paper with YOUR chemicals and YOUR light, and YOUR temperature, and YOUR method of agitation. And what in the hell good is doing a test if you are going to adjust the contact prints or the enlargements to make them look right. You need to do them to the standard so if they don't meet the standard you can figure out what you did wrong (meter possibly off, temperature too hot or cold, paper getting old, didn't set f stop correctly, shutter needs repair, etc. etc. etc.). Kevin

[Andy_1233]

I guess I wasn't clear about ?contact printing' the negatives. I believe that with the BTZS or Darkroom Innovations method involves contact printing a step tablet onto your chosen film, under your enlarger, to expose the film for subsequent development and sensitometric testing with a densitometer. My confusion is, how does this relate to exposing your film with camera and lens, under daylight conditions ( if this is how you normally photograph )? You are testing the film in this case and excluding your camera, shutter, lenses, and light source altogether. It would seem to me that the most effective way would be to include the camera system and typical lighting conditions as part of the test. My question was more along the lines of, what methodology are all of you using to include this yet cut down on material usage, time, ( the testing in the Practical Zone System involves at least a box of film and as many papers, and a lot of time ) and eliminating as much as possible the environmental variables?

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

A guy by the name of Fred Picker has taken alot of heat in this forum, but he did say some things that made one hell of a lot of sense. One of them was to go and look at prints made from different papers and then PICK ONE and stick with it. Pick one film and stick with it. Pick one camera and stick with it. Pick one or two lenses and stick with them. Get all of that stuff behind you as quickly as you can so that you can get one with the business of making meaningful photographs. I myself look at photographs a lot more than I make them these days, but in my very humble opinion, the greatness of the photograph does not depend upon the material used but rather the vision of the photographer and the excitement generated by the thing being photographed. So, just for an example, you say to yourself, I am going to pick t-max film, rs developer, and oriental paper and I am going to find out what they do and then use them. I think you probably will do just as well as if you picked ilford hp5 and d 76 and polymax, as long as you test what you have picked, learn all of it's ideosynchrocies (sp) and get on with making photographs. Kevin