In search of the perfect negative

[evan_parker]

I, like many photographers, am in search of the perfectly exposed and

developed negative. Over time, I have been able to get negatives that

will consistently print well. However, I'm still not sure exactly HOW

a perfectly developed negative is supposed to look.

 

Are there any pictures of well-developed negatives, perhaps in

tutorials, on the Internet? I know the Kodak dataguides have diagrams

and pictures of them, but I was wondering if perhaps any of you

knowledgeable people could point me towards some pictures of these

wonderfully exposed and developed negs. ;)

[lex_jenkins]

I'm not sure it will ever be possible to consistently recognize with the unaided eye a "perfect" negative. Every time I think I've mastered that particular skill I realize I've duped myself.

 

For example, after years of using Tri-X I'd managed the knack for spotting at least the most printable negs. Then I tried Tri-X in Diafine and that technique went straight down the toilet. Diafine produces an entirely different looking negative that will take a whole new round of experiments and experience to enable me to get back to where I was. I've heard some folks make similar remarks about using staining developers.

 

The best you can hope for is to learn to identify the frames from a particular type of film, developed one particular way, that will print well using a particular type of enlarger.

 

If there was a better way or a shortcut none of us would bother with contact sheets.

[tom_menegatos]

I don't think I can help... there's no such thing as perfect, except in walgreen commercials. As long as you're getting perfect (according to you) prints, that's all I'd be concerned about. If you have a densitometer you can measure your highlights and shadows and see if they fall in the range that's considered perfect for that film. In the end it's the print that matters. If you find you're can't get the prints you want you're negative isn't perfect. Striving for a perfect negative is like looking for the perfect way to string a guitar. Sure it's nice to know but that's not what the craft is about. When was the last time you saw a framed negative on someone's wall.

 

Although... Here are some guidelines. Expose a roll of film at it's rated ISO and send it to a local lab that does black and white. Look at the negatives. What you have is an example of an underexposed over developed negative in most situations.

 

The best thing you can do... Get a bunch of the film you use and take photographs of the types of subjects and the types of conditions you normally shoot in. Take the same photo over and over again except bracket it to simulate different iso settings. Start with 1/4 of the films iso and move up to 2 times the iso in watever increments fit in the roll you have. If you have a bulk loader you can make multiple short rolls. Do this with 3 or 4 rolls of film or figure out a way to cut them in the darkroom. Develop one at the recommended settings, one at a little more and two at a little less.

 

Make contact sheets at grade 2 and compare the results. Make a bunch of prints of various frames.

 

You'll figure out what your perfect negative should look like as well as how to manipulate your exposure and processing to get different looks. This may be boring, a waste of film but definately not of time. You'll learn a lot from doing this.

[d_poinsett]

By "perfect negative", I presume you mean a negative that prints the way you want it to. If you are looking for examples, many (not all) of Adams' prints are from negatives that produced a print that reproduced the range of tonality that he wanted and often conform to generally accepted ideas about an "ideal" range for that tonality.

 

If you inclined to master the technical elements of photography (distinct from the aesthetic elements), then books such as Adam's "The Negative" and "The Print" and Davis's "Beyond the Zone System" elaborate on the technical parameters by which a "perfect negative" may be assesed and how to achieve them in your own work.

 

Generally, negatives which contain the range of tonality you wish to print and match the capability of the paper on which it will be printed are considered "perfect". There are some well accepted guidelines for this but it really comes down to what you want. Most photographers never master the process well enough to have much of a choice at the exposure or development stages. That is not to say that the work of more intuitive photographers is anything less it's just that they will approach the process from a different direction.

 

Let's consider a typical example. If the range of tones that you want in your print have a density range on the negative of log 0.90 and the paper you are using needs a range of log 1.15 to represent those tones, the negative is not "perfect". No matter what you do, the print will not contain the tones you want. Print darker to get good blacks and the highlights will never get to white. Print lighter to get the highlights right and the darkest tones will never get to black. The opposite will be true if the negative density range exceeds the paper exposure range. (This is a bit of an oversimplification but it makes the point. It also makes a good case for variable contrast paper but that is another discussion.)

 

A densitometer makes these kind of assessments easy but someone with a great deal of experience can be suprisingly good at recognizing these ranges by eye. I'm not one of them and must use the densitometer.

 

If you really want to see the results of a good negative and an excellent print made from it, you must see prints in person. Images on the web and in books will not be able to reproduce the range of tones that appear in a properly displayed print. If there are any galleries or museums in your area that have prints by recognized masters of the fine print, then you should seek them out if you haven't.

 

One last note: Howard Bond offers a workshop "Refinements in Black & White Printing" that not only addresses the technical issues I've discussed here but also spends a fair amount of time reviewing fine prints from his personal collection in order to get a sense of what a fine print might look like and what options are available to you. His collection includes work by Adams, Weston, Cunningham, Ulesmann, Kenna, and many others. His own work is also a great resource for review since he has spent years perfecting his skills. At $175, Mr. Bond's workshop is a bargain. (No, I don't get anything for recommending his workshop.)

[conrad_hoffman]

I made a perfect negative once, but it was destroyed in an accident so I can't prove it. The old saying for large format was that you should be able to read newsprint through the highlights. Not sure if that still applies, but it suggests that many people over expose and/or overdevelop and/or over agitate.

[stephen hazelton]

I'm nowhere near the perfect negative- but a couple of thoughts-

First, reading Adam's "The Print", a lot of his negatives took major burning and dodging to get prints he liked- that doesn't sound very perfect, and I recall he even comments about some of them being very hard to print.

 

Secondly, asking about the perfect negative is sort of like asking how to paint the perfect painting- there's no definition of "perfect" other than "what you like best". If your negatives look the way you want them to, then what does it matter what anyone else wants their negatives to look like? For example, using different paper and different enlargers will give different contrast- so if two different people wanted the same picture to print on #2 paper and look the same, they would have to come up with two different negatives to achieve this. Neither one would be perfect for the other, but each might be perfect for the one who produced it.

[chris_waller]

After reading 'The Negative' by Adams and also 'Elements' by Barry Thornton, I put the Zone System methodology into effect. Let me say that I use condenser head enlargers. My negs print perfectly on my enlargers but compared to what most people are used to my negs look thin and flat. You should aim to produce a negative that will print perfectly at a grade 2 - 2.5.

[m0002a]

The books "Darkroom" and "Darkroom 2" have pictures of negatives from some famous photographers that might help. "Darkroom 2" has some pictures of Edward Weston negatives that were printed by his son Cole. These books can be found in many libraries.

 

If you ever get to Tucson, the University of Arizona has many original negatives in the Ansel Adams Archives, although I don't know how difficult it is to view the negatives or if they have any on display.

[john_stockdale2]

I don't think I've produced a perfect negative or even seen one (perfect is such an extreme word), but PMK negatives are exceptionally beautiful to look at, if you like looking at negatives.

[rick_jones5]

Evan - my definition of a perfect negative is one that produces the print I had hoped for on a medium grade of paper with a minimum of burning and dodging. The problem is the perfect negative can look very different depending on the type of film and the type of enlarging equipment used. Looking at someone elses perfect negative can be very misleading. I recommend you run Kodak's ringaround tests as described in "Kodak Professional Black-and-White Films". After you have made straight prints of all the negatives and chosen the print that looks best pull that "perfect negative" and compare it to the others on a light box. While this is a lot more trouble than looking at pictures of wonderfully exposed and developed negatives when it comes down to it your perfect negative is the only one that really matters.

[severi_salminen]

"First, reading Adam's "The Print", a lot of his negatives took major burning and dodging to get prints he liked- that doesn't sound very perfect, and I recall he even comments about some of them being very hard to print. "

 

In my opinion a negative can be perfect even with dodging and burning as those are local procedures not affected by exposure or development - necessarily.

 

A perfect negative is a negative which you can print correctly with minimal work. Zone System helps to approach this goal.

[James G. Dainis]

The negative is only the starting point. Adams stated that one should try to get the best negative possible and then create the best print possible in the darkroom. I've never made a straight print in my darkroom; I always used a bit of dodging, burning, cropping, filtering etc. So I guess I never had a perfect negative. Or maybe I did and made it even more perfect. <B></b><p>      "<I>Perfect isn't good enough.</I>" - Derek Flint in the movie "Our Man Flint".

[jay_de_fehr]

Hi Evan. The short answer is; look at your negatives that consistently print well. After all, that's the goal of a negative, to produce good prints. You can imagine how the negative could be improved by noting how your print could be improved. The longer answer involves implementing the Max. Black paper/developer test to establish your basic printing time. Essentially, find out how long to expose your paper through the clear portion of a negative (film base+fog) to develop the maximum black that your paper/developer combo is capable of, and then print your negs at that time. If your negs are lacking, this method will reveal how they are lacking. If your prints are too light, your negs are too dense. Prints too dark, negs too thin etc. Continued refinement of your negs through this process is very instructive and intuitive, and illustrates the relationship between exposure/development of the negative and the print. Next to "expose for the shadows, develop for the highlights", this is the single most useful tool I've yet learned to produce better photographs. Good luck.

[m0002a]

One interesting story about Ansel Adams is when he traveled to New Mexico in 1930 to finish his Taos book. At that time he knew he had to decide between photography and music (he was a concert pianist) as a career because he could not do both and be successful at either.

 

While in Taos, he met with Paul Strand who asked Adams if he wanted to see his negatives. Strand had no prints to show Adams because he had not made any prints during his visit to NM, and had not brought any with him from NY.

 

Looking at Strand's 4x5 negatives turned out to be a (or maybe �the�) defining moment in Ansel Adams� life. Adams said that his "understanding of photography crystallized at that moment" upon viewing the Strand negatives. When Adams returned to San Francisco he announced that he would give up the piano and become a full time photographer.

 

See "Ansel Adams: An Autobiography," NYGS, 1985, page 109.

[James G. Dainis]

It is a good thing that Strand did not shoot in 35mm or else the world may have lost a fine photographer/technician. I sometimes take out some of my 4 × 5 and 8 × 10 negatives just to look at and admire them. They are things of beauty unto themselves. They show more dynamic range than can be captured on paper.

[barney]

Mr. Parker: FWIW. I do not judge negatives on a light table. I judge them on my elarger. To me that is an easier thing to do. I suspect it is easier because the negative is enlarged. After a short time I discovered that I can put a strip of 5 negatives in the negative carrier with one showing on the table and have the aperture setting as I would for a print. This is all done after I have set everything up and tested for Max. black for that particular film and paper. When I turn on the enlarger, and the negative is projected to the paper (a paper that has been ruined)I can tell if it will be a decent print just by the way it looks on the paper. The intensity of it all is what I am looking for. I am very seldom wrong. I do not always make a contact print now because of this. Perhaps you may want to try this technique for awhile. You will probably have to print a few until you can judge the negative correctly.

Regards: Barney

[chris_waller]

I have two perfect negatives. One is a shot of an ash tree and the

other a shot of a small copse of trees. So, that's two perfect

negatives out of a total collection of 12,500 taken over twenty

years. During the course of the next twenty years I hope to

produce two more perfect negatives.

[stephen_benskin]

John Sexton says that it isn't about obtaining a perfect negative, but producing a perfect print. The negative just needs to be good enough to work with. Because of all the creative choices in the making of a print, the only way to have a perfect negative is if the scene itself was perfect, but that is rarely the case. The controls we have over the negative are large and general, ie overall contrast or lightening or darkening tones with filters. Precise control is made in the printing. Negative control in combination with printing can maybe, just maybe produce a perfect print and that's what counts in the end.

[d_poinsett]

Well put Stephen.

[ken_schroeder]

I have found Fred Picker's Zone VI Workshop book (now out of print, but readily available) a useful guide on the road to "perfection". The information in the book will help you get your negative densities within a very printable range. If you are a video type, Fred's videos are useful, also.