Bergger and PMK

I am very new to B&W and I am enjoying it a lot. I am shooting

4x5 bergger at asa 100 and developing in PMK pyro at 80

degrees (in the shade) for 7 minutes. I meter from the shadows

and put them in zone II and highlights fall in VIII. What I get is

unexposed shadows and wonderful midtones and highlights.

Sometimes I overexpose 2 stops and I bearly get detail in the

shadows. Should I rate Bergger even slower than 100. Should I

get my Luna-Pro F checked for calibration? Or should I try Ilford

FP4 plus (Which is already in my mailbox) and see what toe and

shoulder would do for me? I appreciate any comments. Thanks

Christian

I give Bergger BRF 200 (the roll film version, rated EI 100) 7.5 minutes at 80 degrees in PMK. However, my understanding of Zone II is that it is just perceptably different in value from Zone I (pure black), but that you will not see real detail until Zone III. I have always metered shadows and placed them on Zone III. So, I think you have effectively underexposed the shadows by one stop.

With all deference to Ed (who BTW has a great site, all here should look at it for wonderful information!) I think Zone III is still too dark to get nice rich shadows with detail. I know, I know, Ansel Adams in his books said this, but try placing shadows in Zone IV and you will see the difference.

There is no question that Zone III is too dense for open shadow detail. I think that when people read that shadow should be placed on zone III what they are missing is that the texts are referring to the deepest darkest shadow areas. Not open shadow as you would finder under a tree.

 

Placing shaded shadow areas in Zone IV will produce wonderful open shadow areas.

 

I think that it was Bruce Berenbaum who suggested this in an issue of Phototechniques some years ago.

 

Mike

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. My negatives are showing

more info all the way from the bottom to the top. I thought that

highlights would overexpose but as far as I can perceive that is

not happening. I am ready to order zome azo paper and see

what they look like printed. I look at the like I look at chromes but I

think you can interpret a negatives in different ways on paper.

Will see!

Thanks, chris

I am a FP4 fan and do use PMK. It sounds like you may not have done enough testing. I do not see how you can practice the zone system with the Luna Pro: is not that an averaging meter? if I am wrong - disregard, otherwise you need a spotmeter and you must do the tests.

 

with HC110 and PMK I get ample detail in Zone III and can often go to II 1/2 and hold good detail. I'd like to try the Bergger. I use a zone board for all tests.

 

best

phil

this is my second post on this and I see the original was in July. I hope you already solved your problem. I looked and I do have one of those meters, it is not a spotmeter. I tried to use that meter in my beginning days with the zone system and it did not work (for me). To me once I had a decent grasp of the zone system (working system) and the spotmeter, I came to believe using an averaging meter is really more complicated. I do use that meter for incident readings occasionally.