But if you want the best results in terms of grain, contrast range and
subtlety of gradation and separation of tones in both the shadows and the
highlights, with the added benefit of ease of use, no masking for example.
it is probably better to go for a film whose grain structure will accept a
wide range of tone, to give in camera negs that can be printed directly
for pt/pd. There is only one type of film that will do the job really
effectively and that is a medium speed , ISO 100 to 125 , film such as FP4
developed in PQ Universal or acid amidol. The difficulty with this method
is that it gives rather long exposure times or needs immense amounts of
light as one needs to rate the film at 25 rather than 125 to give good
shadow detail. Tests with Tri X 5 x 4 with long development times did not
give such good results.
If you you do not have access to a large camera, an approach to explore is
to contact your 35mm negs onto fine grain positiove release film for the
inter positive which can be used to enlarge for the contact negative. The
standard methods of under exposure and over development can then be used at
each stage to enhance the contrast for the print out or near print out
processes. Remember not to have too high d max at the inter positivrre
stage as this will not print at the interneg stage. It is also worth
remembering that products designed to give very fine results for silver
gelatine printing will not give optimum results for contact print out
processes that need a negative with a wider density range. They are not
designed to do so.
One has a suspicion that these discussions are becoming a bit passe as the
results one has seen from enhanced digital negs are becoming more and more
impressive.
Terry King