Pre-development bleaching

[michael_veit]

Has anyone tried Thornton's technique of negative bleaching prior to

development?

 

http://www.barry-thornton.co.uk/bleachbleach.htm

 

I'm looking for some way of handling an extremely contrasty scene

involving sun "splotches" in a dim environment. The splotches are

well defined and could easily be burned in during printing, but not

without getting that featureless light grey look that Thornton

describes.

 

Ideally, I'm trying to get extreme contraction without massive

compression of mid-tones and am wondering whether this pre-bleaching

might do the trick.

[ken_miller4]

While I've never done it, I know that <a href='http://radekaphotography.com/'>Lynn Radeka</a> uses what he calls SLIMT (selective latent image treatment?), in which he uses a bleach to reduce contrast in the latent image. He says it works much better than reduced development, I think because it does not affect the shadow areas as much as reduced development would.

 

You might be interested in reading up on his masking techniques - one of them is for creating a fog mask which will allow you to bring down very small highlight areas. Check out the examples at the <a href='http://www.maskingkits.com/maskingexamples.htm'>bottom of the page</a> for some interactive masking samples.

[michael_veit]

Thanks, Ken, I've always been intrigued by Radeka's masking techniques. Have you used them?

[scott_walton2]

Go back to the same site and hop over to his 2 bath developing... if you

haven't already developed the negs, using a 2 bath like Divided D76 or

Divided D23 (alot of sulfite so it won't be as high of acutance i.e. you grain

won't be as sharp) and meter for you shadows. The 2 bath developers are

compensating so your highlights won't be blown out... just developed to

perfection (using silver emusion films [non t-grained films]). Here is a good

article to read on DD23. Go to:http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/DD-23/dd-

23.html

[michael_veit]

Scott,

 

Yes, the divided developer is definitely something I'm going to try. In fact, I have several different treatments I'm going to try singly or in combination -- I'm willing to blow a lot of film for this shot. I was just wondering whether anyone had success with the bleaching technique because I tried it once a couple years ago on some roll film and the process went too far and I ended up with weak negs. But I'm going to give it another shot.

[gary_meader]

I've used it for a very high contrast scene on TMY. The exposure

was 4 minutes inside a barn with windows to the outside in the

frame. The process worked fairly well, but I feel it presents a

paradox: My neg ended up a bit flat in the interior of the barn.

Highlights on beams, hay, etc. were flat enough to require print

bleaching to snap them up. That tells me that the neg needed

more development, but that would send the extreme highlights

over the edge, and that's the whole point of pre-bleaching. The

detail outside the windows and door were printable with some

flashing, but the neg overall needed to be printed with a very

strong filter, #4 1/2. It's a very tough neg to get to look right, but I

suppose it would be worse w/o pre-bleaching. The hardest part

is putting your negative into a bleach solution before

development and trusting there will still be an image! Good Luck

[michael_veit]

Thanks for the input, Gary. I already have this feeling it isn't going to be a magic bullet for the task, but I'm gonna fool around with it anyway.

[doremus_scudder1]

Michael,

 

I use SLIMT techniques for all contractions now. I, too, find that they are better than reduced development as far as contrast distribution goes and allow far greater contractions as well (N-4 or more easily). The trick is calibrating your films and development schemes. It takes some testing to arrive at the proper bleach dilution and times. David Kachel's articles describe the calibration process in detail.

 

Although no magic bullet, I find SLIMT techniques superior to reduced and compensating development. SLIMTs can also be combined with compensating/reduced development techniques to achieve even more contrast reduction.

 

As in the example given above, however, many situations will still require extensive print manipulations. You cannot change the order of tones in the negative scale, only the overall contrast range. What SLIMTs do is give a little more shadow and mid-tone separation in comparison to reduced development. This improvement is less with compensating development, but still marked.

 

Do experiment and add this technique to your bag of tricks.

 

Hope this helps.