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Re: development for alt-process; SBRs

Carl wrote:

>
>In Sam's earlier message he pointed out that your densitometer numbers--were
>they something like .85 to 2.35?--indicated over-exposure and fairly correct
>development for Pd. That assumes that you were shooting a 'normal' scene
>with highlights and shadows that should be rendered as very bright and very
>dark in the print. At least a stop less exposure would be indicated, with
>the same development.

Yes, I am pretty sure now that I did over-expose. This is partly because I
was confused at first about what a subject brightness range of 7 would be.
I metered the sky and included that in the SBR, and I think that was a
mistake.  I thought that since I was going to under-develop a bit, I should
give a bit more exposure to the shadows.  As it turned out, I both
over-exposed and over-developed.

Today I re-shot the same scene, and I decided the SBR was in fact 6 (also
the sun was behind a cloud), so I shot it at 320, my "normal" ISO for
silver.  I processed that film for 12 minutes, which is about 70% more than
my normal time for silver.

It seems that both an SBR of 7 and one of 6 are considered "normal" SBRs.
I think I know what 6 looks like:  that's when the thing you want to have
as a textured highlight falls in zone VII.  Like today:  the door was zone
III, the porch steps were zone V, and the white pillars of the porch were
zone VII.  There was no zone VIII or zone II thing in the scene, but they
would have fallen in the right place if there had been, I think.

I *think* an SBR of 7 would be the same scene on a brighter day, when the
pillars sometimes read in zone VIII. On a day like that, if I wanted the
pillars to be textured, I *think* I would develop for less time and maybe
change the ISO to say 250, to avoid having the shadows too dark.  I wonder
if most people on this list worry about the shadows when they are trying to
under-develop a bit to avoid blocked highlights. I didn't start worrying
about that until I read Dick Arendtz's book.

>
>However, there is no one aim point for densitmeter readings from real world
>negatives. First off, the probe can't read single values unless the subject
>has big broad planes of even tone, like a gray card test. The probe is
>always averaging tones in real subjects, and you aren't likely to find a
>near-black (Zone I) value that's easy to read with the probe.

I was reading the zone III stuff, which was a door on a 4x5 negative, so it
wasn't too hard to read.

>
>On another front, I've been doing a lot of snow scenes recently, and many of
>them read out about like the "too dense" negative you described--in fact the
>thinnest areas are sometimes over 1.00 and densest areas around 2.10 to
>2.20.

!!!


 They print beautifully. There are no "blacks" in the print which is
>perfectly appropriate for the subject. The huge masses of white and near
>white are nuanced and lovely. Those densities were "correct" for those
>subjects, whatever nominal ei the meter was set for. A different subject,
>say a white building in sunlight surrounded by a pine forest, might meter
>out with the white paint somewhere around 2.00 and the shadows under the
>pines at .20 to .40 to print nicely in palladium with a full range in the
>print from near maxiumum black to delicate near-white.

I wondered about that--whether the goal is a *relative* range, like say a
DR of 1.4, or whether the absolute values matter too.  Like, if you had a
very dense negative with the right range, could you just expose the paper
longer?


--shannon