Pushing film?

WHAT! pray tell does pushing film mean? Let's say I am using 100ASA film. Under what circumstances would you push the film and what are the effects of doing so?

I will offer the general answer, and let others give specific

uses and recommendations: Pushing film means exposing and processing

it as if it were more light sensitive than its ISO rating would

indicate, which in many films is not that precise anyway. Pushing

film means underexposing it from slightly to excessively, and

compensating by extending the development, usually by time.

Primarily film is pushed to get a more useable shutter speed or

greater depth of field under difficult lighting conditions. Some

times film is pushed, or pulled, to aquire a certain "look". I

usually carry just Provia F for my colour work. In reasonable

lighting I use the film at its rated speed (100) but as the light gets

dimmer I rate the film at 200 (one stop push) or 400 (two stop

push) depending on the lighting and subject motion. I just shot

off a roll in my son's dance class where I pushed the film one

stop to 200. I ended up exposing at 1/60 at f2 which was just fine

as I was hoping for a little blur and much better than the 1/30 I

would have had at the rated speed.

 

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Cheers

All that John said is true. The only thing left out is that after

you shoot your film at that higher ISO, you must compensate during

the development stage... otherwise all you will have is underexposed

film. Slide film has lower tolerance for erroneous exposure, so it is

critical to let the lab know what ISO the film was shot, so they can

adjust the processing time.

 

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Also, there is no free lunch. It is best to have the right film, but

if not pushing is better than no photos. Some reports show that some

films are actually better pushed than the next fastest film... so

pushing is not just a possibility, but better than the result from

faster film. This is true of slide film... faster print films are

excellant these days.

 

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Pushing can lead to black shadows with no detail and higher contrast

and grain. If this is something you think you might have to do, you

should burn some film and take notes. Everyone has a different level

of acceptance for image quality, so you should know the outcome

before you need to do it in an important situation.

Others have implied, but not stated explicitly, that there's really

no such thing as increasing film speed by pushing--what you get is

increased contrast. This *might* lift some brighter shadows into a

very slightly higher range (a look at the appropriate curves show

that this lift is almost negligible--most of the change occurs in the

highlights, where you don't need or, especially, want it), but

nothing is added to the shadows that wasn't there before "pushing".

If you are doing a lot of digital work, as many people are, you'll

find that "pushed" negs are harder to scan and give worse results in

general, but that properly scanning and manipulating scans of

underexposed non-pushed film in general will often give you better

results.

I think Michael's comments about the difficulties of scanning pushed

film apply equally well to printing. Extending the development time,

in an effort to increase negative density, leads to blocked up

highlights which reduce the printability of the negative. Pushing

Provia 100 leads to higher contrast and inky-black shadows.

 

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So, what of Kodak's claim that T-Max films are easily pushed, for

example in T-Max developer? I think one gets away with it a little

better, with T-Max, because of its very good shadow speed. I can

readily see that T-Max really does have more shadow detail than, say,

FP-4, to name one where I've made this comparison. Kodak even

recommends a normal development time when "pushing" (underexposing) T-

Max by one stop. Even so, you don't get as much shadow detail as if

you had not pushed. But the loss is minimal at one stop under. Only

thing is, T-Max tends to be a bit flat, IMHO, in many developers,

including T-Max developer.

 

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Regards,

I actually just "pushed" some film for the first time recently. I

was completely surprised (and pleased) with the results. I was using

Kodak Tri-X 400 and pushed it to 3200 to take pictures in a dimly lit

basement. I actually thought that I might be pushing it too far to

develop useable prints, but it turned out great. Also, I am not a

stickler for development temps and times (as I learn more I will

be!), but my film still came out great. I think this just goes to

show that experimentation can work out great for us amateurs. I

would suggest playing around with pushing and pulling film. Like the

others said, you can get some great unique results!

I can agree with the above statements, but I find that shooting

Tri-X at 400 is already a push. It is really 200 to 320. What do you

think?

 

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Art

Does anyone know about specific development times? If you do 400--

>3200, do you develop it 200% as long as you usually would, or 150%

Thanks

Ok i shoot TriX -400 and Tmax400. Thats really about as fast as i like it anyway because im not to big of a grain fan. Now i normally would use a 100 ISO. Ok say im shooting Tmax100 pushing it at 200 ISO, do i add more development time to the negitive, or to the actual paper/print from the enlarger??

P.S. say the temperature is 72 degrees normally thats about 6 1/2 mins with the negitive, increase that?? or my developmet time for the print which is usuually around 2/ 2 1/2 mins to the print.

Tri-X pushed to 800. I think the 'tonality' is quite nice<p>

 

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