Suggestions on These Prints?

My darkroom results are still miserable. I tried several test strips on both these prints, and can't say the test strips seem to show me what direction, time/aperture would be best.

This first example is an old wooden dark blue storefront, with lovely deterioration and a front concrete stoop.

The film is Ilford HP5+, developed with D-76, and printed using Dektol. The negative is 'dark', yes, but appears fairly reasonable to me and should be workable. For this print the enlarger was set at F4, at 30 seconds, and developed for 2 minutes. It was a bright morning but no direct sun on the storefront. I'm certain I was at F16, likely 250th.

Yet it's washed out, very little detail and the pitted concrete of the stoop has disappeared.

This second, of an old neighborhood mailbox looks 'muddy', with none of the tones of either black nor white. It was under a tree with mottled shade/sun, and as with both I took reflected meter readings close to the subject with a Gossen SBC.

Clearly I need some remedial help on this, is there a book that would be recommended on how to judge a negative and how to print it for the effect one wants, or at least how to print it without these errors?

Awfully sorry for the long post - Thanks

The first looks awfully contrasty to me, and I think needs to be printed with a bit less contrast.

The second, to my eye, has the opposite problem-it has too little contrast.

So, since you didn't mention-I'll ask-

1. Are you using graded paper or multi-grade? If you don't know, it's a safe assumption that it's multigrade, as you pretty much have to go out of your way to buy graded paper anymore

2. If it's multi-grade paper, what grade filter are you using?

Again, I'm going to assume on the second that you're not printing with a filter. Ilford paper printed with an incadescent source and no filter will print to a grade 2, and I'd assume other paper makers are similar. Grade 2 is considered to be for negatives of "normal" contrast.

If you have a color head, you can dial filters in with it. Ilford sticks a piece of paper in the box with a chart telling the settings to use with a color head(I recommend using the "two filter" chart, as the exposure does not change as you change grades).

If not, you NEED to invest in a set of printing filters. I have Ilford branded ones in 1/2 step increments I think from 00 to 6. The set I have are in 2x2 plastic mounts, which WOULD fit the filter drawer on Beseler enlargers except that they have a small "handle" to tell you the grade that keeps them from fitting in the drawer. Because of that, I use them on a lens mount. There are larger ones available that can be used at various places in the optical path.

In any case, I'd try the first at a grade 1, the second at a grade 3, and go from there-you can tweak it to get EXACTLY the look you want.

Book(s) Ansel Adams' The Negative + The Positive ar surely worth borrowing. I admit: They are among the few books bibliophobic me wants to even own.

I don't know if there even is any fool proof(ish) "re-print it right" guide book, assuming it is a major PITA to get the look of mistakes and proper print on silver properly conveyed by means of offset printing.

I agree with Ben.

The first looks awfully contrasty to me, and I think needs to be printed with a bit less contrast.

Look how differently the shoes got rendered! you are using the entire contras range to describe that pair no lights left for the concrete. Maybe a case for dodging and burning* if softer paper doesn't cut the cake? <- Hard work.

it's washed out, very little detail and the pitted concrete of the stoop has disappeared.

If concrete is grey, and your image renders it white, you should expose longer.

This second, of an old neighborhood mailbox looks 'muddy', with none of the tones of either black nor white.

f4?!? - Daring! I don't know your enlarger. I don't really trust mine. back in the 80s I printed with bread & butter stuff and stopped my enlarging lenses down significantly to make sure to be within their sweet spot and on the safe side in case something was slightly missaligned. - The PZO glass I used started at f4.5 and didn't close beyond f11 so I used f4.5 for focusing and f11 for printing.

Thanks for this Ben, very helpful. I'm using Ilford Multi-Grade 4 RC Deluxe Perla paper. I clearly don't understand the effects of filters in printing. Here's my enlarger, an LPL [saunders] VCCE, with internal filters.

And the first paragraph of the owner's manual:

Ilford recommends contrast filter #2, which I had set for both prints using the large right side black knob. The selection of contrast filters is from 0 - 5 in half steps. What I should do at the next darkroom session is choose a balanced negative and do a test strip at the various contrast settings to see their effect. I would have yesterday but became too frustrated.

From your explanation it would seem correct use of filters would get me what I want. Which surprises me, I had the unlearned thought that correct exposure and correct printing technique would provide good results. Clearly I need to understand the filter effect.

Thanks again Ben!

Thanks jochen for the tip on concrete. I haven't tried and dodging or burning yet, I recognize how helpful it is for certain prints, but I'm still struggling with the early basics.

My guess is the enlarger is fine and can be trusted, I took the head apart and it's fresh in there despite its age. Guessing that using the contrast filters accurately will help a lot.

Eric,

Try printing the first again with the filter set to a grade 1(exposure the same) and see if you like the results better. My GUESS is that you will hold more detail in the concrete and the dark shoe both. If it's better but still not there, you can drop down even further. I'm assuming you probably have half grades also-if one doesn't hold all the detail you need, but the next down starts looking "washed out", split the difference between the two with a half grade and see what happens.

Do the same in the other direction with the first negative-my guess is that it will print really nicely at a 3 or 3 1/2 at the most.

Unfortunately, not all scenes/negatives are perfect, and learning to use contrast correctly can often get you most of the way there. Dodging and burning can come next. A negative has a LOT more dynamic range than printing paper, which is why we have to do these things.

The negative is 'dark', yes, but

Dark and contrasty with highlights (dark areas of the neg) that you can hardly see through = overdevelopment of the film.

Dark pretty much everywhere with 'normal' contrast = overexposed.

and as with both I took reflected meter readings close to the subject with a Gossen SBC.

With a contrasty subject like this, an incident reading would be better. In fact in most situations an incident reading is better. Movie directors and lighting-cameramen rarely fart about with reflective readings.

A negative has a LOT more dynamic range than printing paper

Only if it's been overdeveloped.

The highlights of a properly exposed and developed negative should have no more than a density of 1.8 + base + fog. You can fairly easily read printed text through such a density, and it'll print and scan well. You should get no more than a density of 2 or 2.2 in specular highlights that print pure white. This sort of density is difficult to read through.

So the overall 'dynamic' or density range should only be somewhere in the region of 100:1, which fits snugly onto the exposure curve of grade 2 or 3 paper. Over developing is a common mistake - and a 'good thick' negative does nobody any favours at the printing or scanning stage.

Many thanks rodeo joe! As an amateur of course all my wounds are self-inflicted... Later this morning I remembered that I hadn't made a 'working solution' of the Dektol yesterday when printing these. So the Dektol was prepared at 1:1, but not cut 1:2 before pouring in the tray. I have a large note up now on this for next time.

I developed the Ilford HP-5+ in D-76 at 13 minutes per the MD site, or so I read. But the negatives are dark, no chance of 'reading through them.' Perhaps I should have watched the temps better, I simply got them from the bathroom cabinet and poured, usually 78F in the house.

I'll move to incident reading then next time for these, these old buildings aren't going anywhere and I had some good stuff on the roll. I've read tons on incident and reflective yet still not confident when to use either.

Thanks again -

I've read tons on incident and reflective yet still not confident when to use either.

Simple: Incident, whenever you can. Sometimes you can't. and then it will be time to think if you need to figure some exposure compensations into your reflective readings or where you should point your meter exactly.

Perhaps I should have watched the temps better, I simply got them from the bathroom cabinet and poured, usually 78F in the house.

You definitely should check the temperature! The whole of photo processing control is based on time and temperature.

Ilford's own datasheet gives standard speed (400 ISO) development times of 7.5 mins in stock ID-11, and 13 mins at 1+1 dilution @ 20 C/68 F. D-76 is identical to ID-11 BTW. A 10 degree F increase in temperature would reduce those times by approximately 33% - I.e. 5 mins undiluted and about 8.5 mins diluted 1+1.

The reason I recommend incident metering is because it eliminates any reliance on the tone or colour of the subject. For example: Your post-box appears to be quite darkly painted, and pointing a reflectance meter at it will give an exposure to render it mid-grey in the negative/print. Whereas you actually want it rendered whatever tone it is in reality. The overexposure consequent on taking a reflective reading will also grossly overexpose the sunlit patches and make them more difficult to print.

Simple: Incident, whenever you can. Sometimes you can't. and then it will be time to think if you need to figure some exposure compensations into your reflective readings or where you should point your meter exactly.

Thanks much Jochen, I just finished a good article saying the same thing. I just hadn't read enough on this and assumed a case by case situation. But it appears incident is preferred whenever possible.

A negative has a LOT more dynamic range than printing paper,

Only if it's been overdeveloped.

Ben is right, rodeo_joe seems to disagree, but I can't tell exactly what he's saying. The discrepancy seems to be in what "dynamic range" means.

Personally, when someone refers to the "dynamic range" of film, I take it to PROBABLY mean the useable range of scene luminance levels. Actually, if I'm talking to them in person I'd ask them to clarify what they mean. If they use the term with respect to paper then I'm REALLY unsure of what they mean.

Here's a set of "curves" published in 1990 showing how Kodak T-max 100 film performed when developed in straight D76 at 68 deg F. (I know that the OP used HP-5 film, but sorry, this is the curve I have; it illustrates the idea.)

The x-axis, side to side (Relative Log E), is a "log exposure" scale. The key point is that every 0.30 on this scale is equivalent to an exposure change of one full f-stop.- that is, a doubling or halving of exposing light depending on which direction you go.

The y-axis, up and down, is called "density." This is a measure of how "dark" the developed film gets. Density also uses a log scale, so the units are the same size as the other scale - each change of 0.30 means that the amount of light coming through the film is either doubled or halved, depending on which direction you go.

If you use rodeo_joe's criteria with this graph:

The highlights of a properly exposed and developed negative should have no more than a density of 1.8 + base + fog.

then you would look at the y-axis, labeled on the left. You can see that the lowest film density on the T-max 100 was halfway between 0 and 0.5, meaning it is roughly 0.25. This lowest level is often called "base plus fog," meaning the plain film base plus whatever amount of chemical "fog" is there. So rodeo_joe is saying you don't want to work with a film density more than 1.8 higher than this - about 2.05 density.

If you were to take one of the middle curves, say 7 minutes development, as normal, and using rodeo_joe's criteria, you can find the usable "exposure" range across the bottom. It spans from roughly 1 to 5 on the "Relative Log E" exposure scale (nowadays they use H instead of E). So the "useable" scene luminance range is 5 -1 = 4 on the log scale. If you want it in f-stops, divide by 0.30 (remember, each 0.30 is equivalent to an f-stop); 4/0.30 = a bit over 13. In other words, about 13 f-stops of scene range is covered in that film density range. If you want to know what is that scene luminance ratio, you can count on your fingers (if you have 13 fingers, that is), doubling each time. So you would go: 2, 4, 8, 16 ...1024, 2048, 4096 and finally, 8,192 (same as 2 raised to the 13th power).

Now in practical terms, this log exposure range sounds a bit long to me, suggesting that using it all would give a print with lowish contrast, meaning a sort of dull, unexciting image. So perhaps a longer development, say 8 1/2 minutes, rather than 7 might be good (or use a "harder" paper grade - one that uses less of the film density range). At any rate, the same film density criteria with 8 1/2 minutes development only spans a range of about 3 on the log E axis - a range of about 3/0.30 = 10 f-stops.

Anyway, this brief lesson on what they call "sensitometry" ought to help give you a little sense of how things work. Most of the film makers have data sheets showing a similar curve for their films, perhaps with one or two of their suggested developers. In the real world, though, hardly anybody wants to print with film densities in the upper numbers, so only the lower range is usually shown.

As a note, here is a brief quote from the article where that graph was published: Kodak "Tech bits" (Issue no 1, 1990) about T-max 100 and 400 films; by Gordon Brown:

Some of you who are long-time readers of our technical pamphlets may remember one, published in 1966, claiming that the luminance recording range of Kodak Plus-X Pan film was 1,000,000 to 1. A member of our scientific staff wondered if this would apply to newer black-and-white films with Kodak T-Grain Emulsion. We've tested these films and we're happy to say they do.

Ps, I did NOT carefully check everything, so if anyone finds errors in my post, please point them out.

It was a bright morning but no direct sun on the storefront.

I'm gonna make a brief comment on your first image. I see hard shadows around the edges (lower and left) of the footwear, suggesting to me that it actually WAS direct sunlight, almost directly from behind you. (In fact, I wonder how you kept your own shadow out of the scene; perhaps it was an on-camera flash? Or just a longish lens?)

I actually think that your job of printing is ok, more or less. The concrete in the foreground is not blown out - I can see the white paper border on the left so I know that the concrete is printed down a bit darker. The printing contrast on the footwear is a bit harsh, but that's YOUR artistic call; I'd personally try a little softer (less contrasty) paper grade. But whatever, it's printed ok, more or less, in my view.

As I understand, you wanted to see more texture in the foreground concrete. The problem, in my view, is in the lighting. It's frontally lit, almost on camera axis, which is the way to minimize texture. If this light had come from a glancing angle from the side then the texture would have stood out a lot more. As an example, look at the crack running between the shoes; the frontal light tries to fill in the shadow, minimizing the effect.

A second point is that with your "dark" film, you MAY be at a point where the "film curve" is "shouldering off." That means lower contrast in that part of the film. If you look at the curve I attached note the steepness of the lines on the middle to left parts of the graph. The steepness represents contrast; less steep is less contrast. As these curves climb, they start curving to the right - less steepness. (Note that lighter objects, such as the concrete, are on the right-hand of the curve; darker objects to the left.) So, IF (not for sure, but if...) your concrete is in an area that is "shouldering off" then those areas will have less contrast, also minimizing the texture. I think the only way you'll know for sure is to try it again, with less exposure and/or development. Again, I don't think your printing skill is the issue here - it's mainly what's on the neg.

A little tip when you are looking at a scene; in my earlier days, sometimes I would shoot something with all sorts of "depth," or 3D sort of appearance - perhaps branches of a tree, or plants in the foreground. Then I'd be so disappointed that the print didn't have that effect. I came to realize that a lot of this was due to me having two eyes and seeing "depth." Which the camera could not do. So I made it a practice to view the scene with only one eye before I get a camera out. Anyway, perhaps you are being influenced by the same thing, observing with your two-eyed binocular vision, and failing to capture that effect with the one-eyed camera. I dunno, just a thought.

You definitely should check the temperature! The whole of photo processing control is based on time and temperature.

Ilford's own datasheet gives standard speed (400 ISO) development times of 7.5 mins in stock ID-11, and 13 mins at 1+1 dilution @ 20 C/68 F. D-76 is identical to ID-11 BTW. A 10 degree F increase in temperature would reduce those times by approximately 33% - I.e. 5 mins undiluted and about 8.5 mins diluted 1+1.

 

The reason I recommend incident metering is because it eliminates any reliance on the tone or colour of the subject. For example: Your post-box appears to be quite darkly painted, and pointing a reflectance meter at it will give an exposure to render it mid-grey in the negative/print. Whereas you actually want it rendered whatever tone it is in reality. The overexposure consequent on taking a reflective reading will also grossly overexpose the sunlit patches and make them more difficult to print.

Excellent stuff rodeo_joe, thanks. I took a walk this afternoon doing numerous incident/reflective readings and differing results occurred nearly every time. Quite a lesson! And yes, out comes the thermometer onto the table, I was being sloppy.

Sitting on my tile bathroom floor with the house kept at 72º, my D76 usually comes out of the bottle at 20-21ºC(all of my darkroom thermometers are mercury lab thermometers that I saved from disposal at work, so I do my darkroom work in Celcius).

With that said, one benefit to using concentrated liquid developers like HC-110 is that you can use a mixer tap to get the temperature just right, and you use such a small amount of concentrate that it does not measurably affect the temperature.

Sitting on my tile bathroom floor with the house kept at 72º, my D76 usually comes out of the bottle at 20-21ºC(all of my darkroom thermometers are mercury lab thermometers that I saved from disposal at work, so I do my darkroom work in Celcius).

 

With that said, one benefit to using concentrated liquid developers like HC-110 is that you can use a mixer tap to get the temperature just right, and you use such a small amount of concentrate that it does not measurably affect the temperature.

Yes! I've got an unopened bottle of HC110 in the cabinet, so much easier to prepare and economical too. Didn't take long to learn that!

Here's a set of "curves" published in 1990 showing how Kodak T-max 100 film performed when developed in straight D76 at 68 deg F. (I know that the OP used HP-5 film, but sorry, this is the curve I have; it illustrates the idea.)

 

I've no idea where that ridiculous set of curves has come from. If you go straight to the horse's mouth - Kodak Alaris's T-max 100 datasheet - you'll see the standard development time curve, in stock D76, stops at a density of around 2.0, including B+F. This is entirely in line with every sensible developing suggestion ever written, including that by none other than Ansel Adams in his book 'The Negative'.

The genuine family of T-max 100 curves from Kodak's PDF datasheet.

A negative density above 2.4 is almost entirely unprintable.

BTW, the 'dynamic range' -more correctly density range- that Ben and I were referring to is the printable part of the film's H&D curve. I.e. that part of the curve that will fit onto a printing paper exposure range. Nothing to do with useable subject-brightness range, which is adjustable by using the film development time to vary negative contrast. Hope that clarifies things.

Addendum.

Here's Ilford's only currently published H&D curve for HP5+. (Not great support Ilford!)

However, it suffices to show what the normal density range of a negative is expected to be.

If we also look at the Rel log E axis, we can see that the exposure range required to give a density range of 1.8 in the negative, is approximately 3.25 or an 1800:1 exposure ratio. This is just under 11 stops, not 13, but in practise the toe portion of the curve is undesirable to use right down to zero density. This gives us 9 or 10 stops of real-world 'dynamic range' or SBR to work with using standard film development and printing techniques. Maybe a stop or two more if we resort to dodging and burning during printing.

If you are fairly 'new' to the disciplines of developing and printing, it's best to not jump into the deep end of the pool -- curves, variable contrast papers, etc.

Do get the Ansel Adams series, but don't start there.

You need an introductory photography book from the days of film. There are MANY of them

My university used to have a decent photography program-- two of the faculty wrote excellent texts:

Davis, Phil

1975 Photography. 2nd ed., Wm C. Brown.

Swedlund, Charles

1981 Photography. Harcourt Brace.

many more are referred to at Book to understand processing

Thanks very much for these books, so far I've bought 'The Zone System for 35mm Photographers', which is an excellent guide to metering through 'previsualizing'.

I'm not much enthused by the esoterics of curves and graphs, I simply want enough knowledge and experience to make good B&W photographs, the kind that have made me pause thinking 'I've never thought of it that way'.

Plowing through the sections and photographs here has been wonderful, an incredible selection, some I've chosen as a sort of guide.

I'll check these suggestions out, thanks again!

I'm not much enthused by the esoterics of curves and graphs, I simply want enough knowledge and experience to make good B&W photographs

I totally agree.

I wouldn't have got into posting H&D curves, but I couldn't let that crazy set of curves posted by Bill go unchallenged.

I have no idea what purpose the authors, Brown & Zawadzki, thought they were serving by publishing a set of curves mainly showing severe over development and over exposure.

I've no idea where that ridiculous set of curves has come from. If you go straight to the horse's mouth...

I did give the name of the publication - Kodak's "Tech Bits." I appreciate that you aren't familiar with it - it's a kodak industry publication slanted towards scientific and technical use of photography; it seems to be mostly unknown on the internet.

Here's what it looked like (image apparently from someone at RIT):

http://mrppph.cias.rit.edu/techbits_1992.jpg

Your so-called "ridiculous curves" came from the coinventor of Xtol, Silvia Zawadzki. I did put her name on the bottom of the graph, but now it occurs to me that her name is perhaps not well-known on the internet. But let me be a bit blunt - it's just silly to dismiss the work of someone like Zawadzki and internal "scientific staff" at Kodak as "ridiculous curves."

I have no idea what purpose the authors, Brown & Zawadzki, thought they were serving by publishing a set of curves mainly showing severe over development and over exposure.

I get that you have no idea of their purpose; you would have to read the article to know. I posted one of the graphs specifically to clarify the relationship between film exposure and its resulting density OVER A WIDE RANGE OF EXPOSURE AND DEVELOPMENT. These are not the truncated published for the general public. But I am getting the sense that this is maybe too much information for today's photo.net.

I'm not much enthused by the esoterics of curves and graphs, I simply want enough knowledge and experience to make good B&W photographs, the kind that have made me pause thinking 'I've never thought of it that way'.

Sorry to have brought in the graphs; I didn't see that this was the "beginner's forum."

But I note that you are now beginning to read about the "Zone System." After you gain some understanding about it you may want to revisit this thread. People learn in different ways; some have a hard time deciphering graphs while others find it an effective way to understand something. If you can deal with the graphs you might realize that each curve is, in essence, a complete set of Zone System film test exposures. Except that they are not limited by the "blockiness" of the Zone System, which is the result of discrete exposures, each 1 f-stop apart. On the curves that rodeo_joe and I have posted, every side-to-side shift on the exposure axis of 0.30 is equivalent to another zone.

Best wishes with your studies.

...These are not the truncated published for the general public. But I am getting the sense that this is maybe too much information for today's photo.net.

Hmm... oh Lawdy! Does that

mean we're gonna have to

THINK...??

http://bayouline.com/o2.gif

Hmm... oh Lawdy! Does that

mean we're gonna have to

THINK...??

http://bayouline.com/o2.gif

Nah!

Remember, this was published in 1990, when the T-max films were still pretty new. So it was letting technical users know something about the recording range of these films.

Today, the applications discussed, such as explosion studies, or rocket flame studies, etc., would probably be done with an array of digital cameras. Just a guess.I