Options to salvage HP5+ overexposed by 4 stops?

As it is bound to happen to anyone every once in a while, I goofed.

Using a view camera, I forgot to stop down my lens while shooting and

what was meant to be exposed at about f/20 was exposed at f/4.5 - four

full stops of overexposure. It was also exposed for EI 250. I noticed

the mistake a few minutes later and attempted a reshoot, but

unfortunately the light wouldn't allow it.

 

Now, I don't think it's really possible to pull my film four stops -

or is it? Which leaves me with two options.

 

1. Pulling only 2-3 stops, using a soft filter to print on silver

gelatin - will the results be worth the trouble? Any idea of the

appropriate times?

 

2. Pulling by whatever is appropriate (or not at all) to get very

dense negatives that will be suited for alt printing (cyanotype or

Vandyke) but completely unfit for silver printing.

 

I would normally soup my HP5+ in HC-110, but I also have some Rodinal

in stock; using the comparatively slow Rodinal to lose some undesired

speed might be an idea. Grain isn't too much of an issue, as I shot on

4x5 sheet film; I have two of these overexposed sheets.

Rusla Safin recently posted here with that exact error -- she was able to salvage the overexposed sheets and in fact posted one that was simply gorgeous (though it might take a very long exposure to print). IIRC, she developed as if for EI 50 (two stop pull) and let the film's latitude take up the difference; her result, on a "painting with light" shot, was a very nice, old-fashioned looking low contrast image.

 

Losing speed in Rodinal is certainly one option; either Rodinal or HC-110 might also help with high dilution, which lengthens process time enough to make handling easier (better than trying to develop for under four minutes in Dilution B). There's only about 1/3 stop difference between HC-110 and Rodinal, according to most reports, so I'd just use the one you're comfortable pulling with.

Sounds like a good prospect for physical development. IIRC, www.unblinkingeye.com has an article on physical development.

Rodinal is not that slow.

Pulling reduces contrast. Generally, you do not want low contrast-high density negs for printing-out papers. They are self masking. The thinnest parts of the neg print first. You should worry more about being on the shoulder of the film curve. Why not experiment with another roll of film. Expose the whole roll as you did the one you are worried about. Use short pieces of it to test various schemes. Try normal development first. Use some Farmer's Reducer in cutting mode on that piece to see if that helps. Try D-23 with 100 grams of non-iodized salt per liter. Add great gobs of bromide to the D-23. Try a pure physical developer where you fix the neg before development. Here's your chance to learn something you and I didn't know before.

There are a couple ways you can do this. First and foremost, if you want

printable negatives you will need, as stated, to at least pull 2 stops. Using

Rodinal, if your most comfortable with that developer and know it's ins and

outs, I would dilute it down to a "compensating" range of about 1:200 at least!

This way, due to it's compensating virtues, the highlights will only develop out

so far and no more because of "lack of developer". HC110 will be a very

contrasty result and you will not have enough time in the soup risking uneven

development after you factor in the 2 stop pull.

The other way you can go is use a true compensating developer. An excellent

one is Divided D76. It is similiar to Diafine without the speed increase in that

you will soup for 3 minutes in Bath A and 3 minutes in Bath B and fix. The

result will be short of amazing in that you will have extremely fine grain and

great contrast with a very printable negative. You can get DD76 at Photo

Formulary or, if your interested, I can send you the recipe to make it from

scratch (very, very easy!). It is a GREAT developer to have in the darkroom

and will give you excellent negs even when shot without mistakes. I don't

recommend it for t-grained films though as the bases are to thick for decent

absorpsion.

Sorry to hear about the mishap.

 

Nice bit of creative thinking concerning Rodinal, but I don't think it would help. Rodinal will give you a reduction in film speed, but that's only measured against placement of the Zone I density (i.e. 0.1 + Base & Fog) against exposure and really only affects your detail in deep shadows. Your midtones and, especially, your highlights will still be too dense.

 

Both HC-110 and Rodinal at heavy dilutions might be able to give you some very mild compensating action to reign in the highlights, but not 4 stops worth.

 

About all I can suggest is going along with your idea for a sharp reduction in development time (50% of normal is probably practical), try to print on a diffusion enlarger, and play around with filter grades. I wouldn't expect much...but you might learn something that will help with less extreme cases.

Donald: Rodinal or HC-110 dilution H are both fine with me. It's the pulling mechanism I'm less familiar with - I'm not sure by how much I should cut the processing. Hey, don't laugh, that means I normally meter spot on! BTW, I normally use rotary processing, ie, Unicolor drums. My normal time would be 5 minutes for EI 250; I get negatives that print with #2 or #2.5 filters.

 

Scott: Rodinal 1:200 sounds like a nice experiment. Any idea of the time my film should spend in that soup? I guess that rotary processing is out of question, if any compensating effect is to occur, right?

 

Patrick: I read the article you refer to. It looks fascinating (and possibly fun for some projects) but I failed to see the point for my current problem. The two pics I missed are not that precious to me and while I'd like to save them, I'd rather spend my energy shooting some more...

 

Al: That's probably what I'll do with one of the two sheets.

A speed reducing developer such as Perceptol could be part of the solution. In fact, the Ilford pdf for HP5+ has a suggestion for the film at EI=50. Perceptol undiluted 9min at 20degC "manual processing" which i assume is not rotary.

I am a Rodinal user, but if it were my film, I would second the Perceptol choice or Microdol. If neither of those are available, then diluted Rodinal. One can pull film 4 stops with slow film developers. One of the Spur developers SLD(?) would also work but may be more difficult to find.

Rodinal 1+250 for 60 minutes. Presoak for a minute or two, agitate for the first 30 seconds, go see a Monty Python short movie. Come back and finish processing (stop, developer, wash).

 

JMHO,

 

tim in san jose

Stop, fix, wash!

 

tim in san jose

I would test with another film too, exposed the same way, and develop 50% of the normal

time... but...

 

What do you all think of using a two bath for this problem? Would it not stop developing

the highlights, as in a compensating developer, due to developer exhaustion also? Two

baths are unique in their 'one time for all films' development lengths and their

compensating effects.

 

Would it work in this case do you think? Any two bath gurus out there?

John,

 

I've done some playing around with DD-23 (Ansel formula) with roll film and after about a dozen rolls I've concluded that there aren't any dramatic effects as far as inducing film shoulder with thin emulsion roll film such as Tri-X. In fact, vs. plain jane D-23 there's little difference with DD-23. Of course, DD-23 is a bit of a cheat because development does take place in the first bath (100 g/L of Sodium Sulfite will do that...), but I don't think results vary enormously with other such two bath developers. Diafine might be an exception.

 

Of course, at four stops overexpsoure, you may very well reach the film shoulder of HP5+ anyways.

 

For this particular problem I tend to doubt that compensating developers would be of much use even if the results matched the theory. Such developers are really nice on paper when you want a bit of a push or you're trying to perform a contraction of the total negative contrast to cope with a contrasty scene (e.g. N-1, N-2 a la Zone System) in order to curtail highlights without comprosmising the shadows, but that isn't the problem here.

 

I think we're stuck with a very flat, very dense negative. I'd be prepared to dial in a Polymax #5, and hope that his cold light bulb can take a *really long* exposure without going bang.

I screw up the same way a while back. Before I processed the "real" shot, I exposed a couple more sheets of film with thee same amount of over-exposure to experiment with. One thing I tried that worked pretty well (and my final solution) was to go ahead and process normally, then used Farmer's Reducer to cut the density of the negative. It wasn't perfect, but...

 

YMMV.

Really, a compensating developer isn't wanted here -- this isn't a situation where the film was underexposed and you need compensation to tame excessive contrast from a push; quite the opposite.

 

Phillippe, for HC-110, I'd use Dilution G (1:119 from USA syrup, or 1:29 from stock solution) at the Dilution B time for a two stop pull, but I find I'm developing about 30% less than most folks for the same EI to begin with (maybe because I scan my negatives, though they look pretty similar to commercially processed B&W); you might test with Dilution H (half of Dilution B strength) at the Dilution B time before going so far out. Generally, you'll want to use the strongest working solution that gives a comfortable process time, since more dilution tends to increase compensation and lower contrast -- which isn't really wanted here.

 

An alternative is to find a way to greatly shorten development with a high contrast developer.

 

Another possibility is a light pre-bleach, but I know little about that process (never tried it at all and have read little), so you'd certainly want to test with film intentionally misexposed the same way before risking your images. From what I know about bleaches in general, I'd expect this to preferentially affect shadows (takes a fixed amount of silver off everything), so tend to increase contrast and undo some of the compensation from diluting your developer, and because the bleach is affecting the latent image specks when you prebleach, I'd expect to need a very weak bleach and a short treatment indeed.

 

Similarly, you could try pre-fixing lightly (diluted fixer, perhaps 1/4 to 1/10 normal strength, and very short treatment with an immediate wash) to dissolve halide and reduce density; this will remove halide at a fixed rate, whether exposed or not, and thus will tend to lower Dmax, but shouldn't change contrast much.

 

How much effort this is worth, of course, depends on what the images were...

I suggested D-23 with salt and bromide as a speed reducing developer, not for compensation or contrast reduction. The idea is to find a way to reduce overall density while maintaining normal contrast. Pulling by shortening development time will not do that.

 

The latent image is not on the shoulder until it is developed. Bromide shifts the H&D curve to the right, especially in metol developers.

Patrick,

 

My rationale for reduced development was intended to try to preserve some sort of local contrast in the highlights rather than have it buried at the DMax.

 

If you can shift the DlogH curve to the right - that's fantastic. BUT...

 

Phillippe seems to only have Rodinal and HC-110 at his disposal. D-23 has to be scratch mixed or purchased from the Formulary.

 

What about adding Borax to his Rodinal? A while back you posted a contribution to Ed Buffaloe's "Appreciating Rodinal" article that suggested use of more than 1 g/L of Borax in 1:50 Rodinal laced with Sodium Ascorbate would reduce film speed. Would that induce a smilar film curve shift to adding Bromide to D-23 - even if the Ascorbate were left out of the Rodinal?

Rodinal is sensitive to added bromide. You would have to do a trial to see how much might be needed. When I added borax, I had to increase development to get the same contrast. Adding borax has the effect of reducing contrast. That is not what we want. Now, if you don't have bromide on hand, you should get some even if you don't use it on these negs. It's handy stuff to have around.

I had the exact same problem: overexposed HP5 by three stops. I pulled it two stops (D-76, 1+0, six minutes) and printed it for a looong time, and they turned out pretty well.<div></div>

Did you really mean 1+0 dilution? It's hard for me to see how 6 minutes at full strength would pull HP5+ two stops.

I'm pretty certain 1+0, yeah. Normal development time for the class I was in was 8:30, which I looked up and is the recommended time for D-76 1+0. I looked around on the web for how to pull it and the recommendation was about 15% for each stop up to three, so for a two-stop pull, reduce time by 30% or roughly 2:30.