Dark Skies W/O Filter

• Not digitally sophisticated enough to post my dark pictures. But I think RJ got it right when he mentioned the altitude: 7000 ft, looking north, late afternoon. The dark sky can be controlled fairly well with my Saunders variable contrast enlarger, but it does throw off the rest of the picture somewhat.
  

ah, altatude sky is darker. but youre a very lucky or skilled photographer to have it rendered properly on the negative then. most people kill to get that perfect dark sky. can you split filter print to compensate the shift?

 

i hope you can somehow post it... ill bet its gorgeous.

"your experiments didn't prove anything, at least from the examples posted."

 

- Then you're very welcome to repeat them using Tri-X and post your results back here.

 

I'll admit to being surprised at seeing almost no lightening of the sky at all. However, you can't dismiss that result out of hand just because theory says it should work.

 

So do the experiment for yourself.

 

"Yes, you can adjust the development of an entire roll of film for a single frame - few people would choose to do that so for most people (other than you) that would not be a practical consideration."

 

- That's why Hasselblad and others made interchangeable roll film backs.

 

Dead easy to have one magazine for N, one for N -1 and one for N +1 development. No waste of film required.

You go to the trouble of doing the experiment, and the results are just ignored.

Ah well!

 

 

Joe im not criticizing your examples, just it didn't demonstrate any difference with or without the filter. AM I WRONG? The reason for that may be you used a digital camera, that may have not responded like film does. Digital in the B&W conversion, may have compensated for it in the color channels. Its not your fault. SO CHILLAX

 

So theory or not, don't get upset because it failed. I'm justifying why it failed.

 

BTW when I shoot roll film I generally blow the entire 10 shots on one subject in the same N or N1 whatever so I can have the ability to make those adjustments. Also removable backs were meant for swapping different films or quick loads, not specially built for zonies.... although it does come in handy for that.

 

Obviously the OP says it interferes with the rest of his exposure but he can compensate using his enlarger controls and years of experience. But for his next time out, he'd like to use a filter instead so the exposure is right in the camera n not the darkroom. That will take some experimenting on the OPs side, I like my exposures without a filter.

Photoshop's Adjastment>B&W even does pseudo infrared.

 

I am not a photoshopper.

I am not a photoshopper.

Of course, Photoshop merely does in software what can be done in a darkroom with appropriate filters....

 

"Of course, Photoshop merely does in software what can be done in a darkroom with appropriate filters...."

 

- Or not.

I sometimes wonder why I waste my time here.

 

I repeated the experiment with the strongest tri-colour blue filter I could lay my hands on; with very little effect on the lightness of a blue sky.

 

I suspect that despite having the visual appearance of intense blue, a 'blue' sky is really grey-blue under spectrographic analysis. Therefore the grey component can't be filtered lighter.

 

Still waiting for someone to waste time and film proving otherwise though.

I expect the computer is well beyond the capabilities of film.

Seems obvious to me.

I sometimes wonder why I waste my time here.

EXACTLY!

JDM, Arthur, the OP, is trying to lighten strongly blue skies, not darken them. He's using B&W film and traditional darkroom techniques.

 

My quick 'n' dirty tests with a digital camera were intended to show the lightening effect of a common 80A filter. Unfortunately, the effect turned out to be so slight as to be visually unnoticeable.

 

So, the only unknown is whether the effect is greater with panchromatic film. I'm betting it won't be.

 

What can be done with a colour original and an image editor is quite irrelevant to the original question.

I seem to remember, reading Adams, that a UV filter was used when shooting at altitude to prevent exactly this problem. It may be that, as some have noted, modern films do not suffer from this issue . . .

Elevation is a factor too