Zone System - tonal range

I have no problem making exposures in high contrast situations and

reducing development accordingly to bring highlights into the

printable range.

However, I am unsure of how to handle scenes taken in low contrast

light - scenes with a narrow tonal range.

If I expose for shadow detail, often there are no highlight tones

which reach Zone VII/VIII. However, if I overdevelop to increase

contrast won't I be distorting the natural contrast? I want to

represent the true nature of the light, but also don't want to make a

flat and dull print. It is a question of delicate rendition.....

Any advice greatly appreciated

The whole idea of expanding contrast by development or changing paper

grades is to "distort the natural contrast" so that you won't have

that flat print you don't want. Only rarely does expanding contrast

to achieve a print with a wide range of tones result in unwanted

harshness locally as long as your development places the highs where

you want them (that is, not too much development). Be carefull to

make sure your mid-tone values don't end up in a place where you

don't want them however. Sometimes a comprimise is the only solution.

Then you must rely on printing controls to get what you want. If the

print would benefit from even greater local contrast, i.e. the

contrast within areas of neighboring tonalities and textures, then

the best way is to use a higher paper grade, possibly in combination

with more development if the overall contrast is also low since

contrastier paper separates close tones better than development

changes. As far as the "true nature of light" is concerned, you

simply need to have a good enough grasp of your materials and

technique to expose a negative and make a print that has the

qualities of light that you envision. Natural means different things

to different people in different circumstances and a photographic

rendition is necessarily only an approximation of the natural range

of tones. Simply put, you need to know what to do to get what you

want, and only experimentation and experience will help you learn.

Hope this helps, ;^D)

Any printed rendition of a natural scene is a distortion of the true

tonal range, because it's rarely possible to represent the full

brightness range of the original scene within the limited reflectivity

range of a piece of paper. The characteristic curve of photographic

printing paper is far from linear too, and you also have to take into

account the ability of the eye and brain to adapt to ambient lighting

conditions. The eye will take the brightest part of any scene as its

'white point', no matter how dim the light really is.<br>All this

makes any photographic print, or painting for that matter, a

distortion of reality, and the best we can do is aim to capture the

mood of the scene. If that means expanding the true contrast, so that

the print doesn't look dull, lifeless, and grey, then that's what

needs to be done.

Stephen, I'm aware of the problem. I think there are two points: the

technical and the aesthetical (psychological).

<p>

From technical point of view if you don't want "artificially" raise

the contrast, you inevitably get a flat print. But "flat" is not

always bad, sometimes it can reflect the mood of the scene (by the

way I don't think that every print must show full tonal range that

the paper can show; for example look at

http://masters-of-

photography.com/S/stieglitz/stieglitz_spring_showers_full.html).

<p>

Another my observation: if the viewer fully recognize the way the

scene is lighted, the contrast of the print can be somewhat raised

without destroying the mood: the viewer's brain does

some "compensation".

<p>

Finally, if the low contrast scene has a small detail at the end of

tonal range of the scene and this details shows high contrast

structure (for example a piece of dark twig in the foreground with

very deep and high contrast texture � it can be achieved with burning

this small area with different filter# if you use MG paper), then the

very fact of the presence of such a detail shows, that not your print

is flat, but the rest of the scene is soft. � The similar trick often

used in high-key shot, where small dark area establish a "reference

tone" and saves the whole image from to be considered as heavily

overexposed.

<p>

Sorry for my broken English.

Since you are a large format photographer: I have found that

developing film in a staining developer, such as a pyro or

pyrocatechin formula, enables me to retain printable high values in

very long scale situations, and that even the longest scale negatives

can be contact-printed on Azo with little or no dodging and burning.

I concur with Pete. When I began with Large format I found it

difficult to translate highlights and quality of light I remembered

into a negative. The prints always were flat and lacked any real

impact. What I discovered, as Pete explains, your mind keys on the

highlights and constructs the contrast of the scene you remeber based

on those highlights. To achieve satisfactory results I learned to

expose and develop for slightly more contrast than you would normally

expect (also considering this may mean reducing development slightly

less then you had been doing) or using a faster film such as TMY or

HP5 and pulling to slightly increase highlight seperation. With the

detail available in the highlights you can use printing for more

contrast control. highlight detail even when printed down always

seems to give the impression of more luminosity then the same area

with no detail IMHO.

There was a post about pulling certain films for zone increases on

the film and processing board.

Hope this helps.