Mortensen and Gradation

[ed b.]

William Mortensen was a pictorialist with an unusual take on how film should be processed. I have a lengthy article about his 7-derivitive technique at

 

<a href="http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Mortensen/mortensen.html">http://unblinkingeye.com/Articles/Mortensen/mortensen.html</a>

 

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Whatever one may think about the aesthetics of his photographs or the controversy over pictorialist versus "straight" photography, there is no doubt that Mortensen was an accomplished darkroom worker whose views cannot be dismissed out of hand. His most significant assertion is that expanding a short-scale subject gives more pleasing gradation than compressing a long-scale subject. Coming from Texas, I almost always encounter the latter situation. My few experiments with Mortensen's technique gave mixed results, but the successes I had were definitely worth the trouble.

 

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I'd be curious to hear the opinions of the contributors to this forum on the subject. Have you ever noticed better gradation from expanding scales than from compressing them? If you don't know anything about Mortensen, take a bit of time to educate yourself. Read my article for the technical stuff, then check out the links at the bottom of the page to see some of his photographs and read other opinions.

[n_dhananjay3]

I suspect this might well be the case - its probably related to the

local contrast issue David Kachel railed about in his articles in

DCCT. I suspect it is fairly common to have perfectly tailored negs

which are them printed on higher contrast paper to ensure sufficient

local contrast in some key area (followed by the necessary heroic

dodging and burning) - the simplest example is how doing an N- leads

to somewhat murkier shadows but there probably are more complicated

situations.

 

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Expanding a limited scale subject ensures good local contrast

throughout the image. However, I think this is something that is

worth being careful with these days. I guess these are personal

decisions but I see many pictures with overly harsh local contrast -

they are very dramatic but seem to lack subtlety to my eye. Papers

have improved substantially from the old days (in terms of Dmax).

This means that papers probably can hold more information and

expanding limited scaled subjects onto such papers can make for

enough distortion of reality that I think one needs to be exercise

considerable sensitivity to the subject and image.

 

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Its not much help in the more complicated situations when one needs

to hold a longer subject luminance range and yet ensure sufficient

local contrast in some part of the image - I find those kinds of

subjects troublesome in the extreme (sort of broad level controls

during neg development but more often than not demanding in the

printing stages). One could find ways that work for a particular kind

of photography - for e.g., the typical landscape concern of ensuring

sufficient detail (local contrast) in the shadows while holding a

longer range lends itself to some overexposure coupled with some kind

of compensating technique.

 

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I think there is another issue here beyond local contrast and that is

related to how film and paper work together. One will often hear

people talk about platinum's longer scale etc. However, actually,

silver gelatin papers typically have considerably higher Dmax than

platinum papers. Which means that they should have a longer scale.

The problem is that the silver enlarging process relies on a low

contrast (gamma or slope of HD curve) negative combined with a high

contrast paper (as opposed to platinum - you seem to develop to about

slopes of 45 degrees or thereabouts - sort of a 1:1 relationship).

That means there is considerably more accuracy required in the silver

development process, minor changes in the curve shape can have

dramatic influences on the final print. Also, typically development

slows down as it proceeds (an overgeneralization but some grain of

truth to it) i.e., the early stages of development are very sensitive

to minor variations. Expanding scales implicitly means developing to

a higher CI and therefore ending up in the more stable region (I'm

curious, which negative do people typically have trouble printing -

N+ or N- : for me, typically the N+ print with no trouble at all). I

think that is because there is less compression/expansion going on in

each stage.

 

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Cheers, DJ.

[james___]

I have found that when needing to do minus development, I use the

middle of the film curve to take advantage of the linear separation of

values. If you use the lower end of the curve, you end up with muddy

shadows. Compression happens in the shadow values first so you have to

compensate by moving the shadows way up the curve. Then when you

compress you compress most of the image linearly. The dodge, and

reburn the shadows with a higher filter. James

[pete_andrews]

Hi Ed.<br>I must admit, I haven't read the Mortensen article yet, so

these are just some immediate thoughts on the subject of development

manipulation:<br>I decided a long time ago that pulling development

wasn't a good idea, for the very reason that it gives flat muddy negs

that can be quite difficult to print. Besides, messing about with

development too much alters the relationship of tones in the negative

relative to the way that the subject is actually seen, and therefore

makes that precious and elusive pre-visualisation much more

difficult.<br>It's all very well squeezing every nuance of subject

detail into a printable range on the negative; but if the result just

looks grey, and the desired atmosphere of the picture isn't conveyed,

then vision becomes a slave to technique, and not as it should be, the

other way round.<p>Using the curves tool in Photoshop on scanned

images has recently given me a much better feel for, and insight into,

which sorts of tonal adjustment look good, and which don't. IMHO, a

long straight tone curve is undesirable, and the only way to deal with

a wide brightness range is to 'bend' the top and bottom of the

transfer characteristic.<br>If at all possible, the mid tone gamma

should be kept fairly constant, and the shadows and highlights

rearranged around it. In other words, a compensating developer

technique gives a better looking negative than simply pulling a normal

development.<br>(Flush that T-max developer now!)

[conrad_hoffman]

This is really interesting. I'd seen Mortensen's stuff, but never

knew anything about his processing theories. Pete probably said

better and in fewer words what I've been thinking lately, that

pulling often doesn't work well, and that a long straight film curve

is undesirable. Actually the best curves for tonal reproduction were

established way back by Kodak and RIT- see Photographic Sensitometry

by Todd & Zakia. Think S shaped. The problem is that modern materials

seem to be optimized for a straight line. Even paper seems to be more

linear than it used to be. Film Dmax seems lower than it used to be

and whenever I cut film development, rather than a nice shoulder,

it's more like a sudden shelf. Doesn't help latitude any. Some of the

nicest negs I ever shot were on Ektapan, a long toe film with no

super straight line. It's still listed in the catalog, but I wasn't

able to get it recently.

[mark_lindsey]

I have never really had any problems with small normal minus dev.. I

always use a highly diluted dev. for extreme cases, and haven't had

any objectionable mid tones with that process.

 

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I'll flush the tmax only after I have made some grand looking negs! :)

[pete_andrews]

"I always use a highly diluted dev. for extreme cases,"<br>Isn't that

exactly what compensating development is?

[ed b.]

To answer my own question, most of my experiences with N-minus

development have been negative (if you will pardon the pun). However,

I met a fellow, Butch Welch, at APIS (the Alternative Process

International Symposium) who uses diluted T-Max RS to develop his

long scale negatives and gets superb results. Butch says the film is

part of the secret--you must have a film that retains it's straight-

line and does not shoulder off when development is reduced. His

choice is T-Max 400. He claims you can't do it effectively with any

of the Ilford films. In any case, I asked him to write an article on

his technique for publication on Unblinking Eye, and he is

considering it. I would also point out that Bruce Barnbaum has been

quite successful with N-minus processing--witness his cathedral

photographs and some of his slot canyon shots. He uses diluted HC-110

and Tri-X. Of course, that still doesn't address the (possibly

subjective) issue of whether N-Plus or N-Minus is more aesthetically

pleasing...

[john_hicks]

> can't do it effectively with any of the Ilford films

 

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Interesting...I've always had the devil of a time putting a usable shoulder into HP5+ and Delta 100 while maintaining enough agitation for good evenness. The curve shape is always dead straight out to Zone XII+.

 

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The only success I've had has been with D-23 or D-25 using dramatically shortened development time, followed by a bath in borax solution. To me that's rarely-used "heroic measures" and always results in muddy low-contrast highlights; otoh I often can't decide which is worse, low-contrast highlights or _lots_ of burning-in.

[n_dhananjay3]

That sounds interesting. I don't know if it solves all problems

because we have something of a basic problem with N- developments.

Eventually, when we deal with extremely long luminance ranges, the

paper is unable to accomodate the entire luminance range. Thus, our

attempts at all kinds of measures to try and get the neg to

print 'normally', whatever that is. But the problem is that if you

have a luminance range longer than the papers luminance range, its

problematic. Note I'm not talking about the exposure scale of the

paper - I'm talking about Dmin to Dmax of the paper - if we say about

2.1 density units, thats about 7 stops. If your subject luminance

range is more than 7 stops, you will lose something at one end or the

other. So, we try various measures to try and get everything in, but

that raises the other bugbear. The only way we can accomodate a

longer subject luminance range with the paper is by reducing the

local contrast in some area or the other (lower slope to the transfer

function). Depending on the approach taken, typically we either get

muddy highlights or muddy shadows. If one is able to drop the slope

of the curve uniformly, one presumably loses local contrast uniformly

across the whole scale, although I think that's preferable to losing

an excessive amount at one end. DJ

[john_hicks]

> If one is able to drop the slope

of the curve uniformly, one presumably loses local contrast uniformly

across the whole scale

 

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Yes, I've found that generally I prefer that solution. The only time I go for the "heroic measures" of putting a strong shoulder into the film is when I'm faced with background very bright sky through the trees. The range between foreground subject and the bright sky is so great that there's no way to hold both so it's preferable to be able to print at least a slight tone in the sky rather than blank white that can't reasonably be burned in.

 

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It gives a weird curve shape, with pretty much normal contrast up to about seven stops, then almost flat. I'd call this extreme compensation but since there's so little contrast up on the high end there's no printable detail.

 

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In looking at photos of similar subjects by other photographers, I've noticed that they generally handle it by not handling it; they either frame so there's virtually no background sky visible or they just let it blow out.