From: Carl Weese (cweese@earthlink.net)
Date: 03/13/01-12:03:11 PM Z
Bill,
(Just got back from a road trip).
My first guess is that your negatives are some combination of
underexposed and/or underdeveloped.
The pyro stain (if it's working right) is proportional, meaning little
stain in the shadows and lots of stain in the highlights. As Gary noted,
a good pyro negative should be close to correct with no filtration at
all (assuming a tungsten light source, not a cold light). Because the
stain is about the color of a soft filter, and is strongest in the
highlights, this causes the highlights to print softer than the dark
areas on a VC paper. The same negative should also print well on a grade
one or zero standard paper but is apt to be too hot for grade two. But,
because the stain color blocks UV efficiently, it will also print well
in Pt/Pd because in effect the Pt/Pd paper "sees" the negative as very
high contrast.
Recently I've found that a lot of my pyro negs print on VC silver best
with 20-30 points of magenta from the colorhead lightsource. This gives
exactly the same overall contrast as no filtration at all, but 'cleans
up' the progression of middle values. For very flat scenes, another 30M
may be required. 60M is still equivalent to only about a 3 or 3.5
filter. If the print is flat at 4.5 filtration the negative is much too
thin, probably _both_ underexposed and underdeveloped. Or.....one other
possibility just occured to me: if the negatives are *massively*
_overexposed_, and developed about right, then heavy staining
appropriate for highlight values could be distributed throughout the
entire tonal scale. THAT could cause the negative to need a really high
contrast filter. So could simple general overall stain (which could be
caused by a bad batch of developer).
So, two questions:
Is the film edge almost as clear as a non-pyro negative, with just a
hint of stain? (that's the way it should be)
If it is, are the shadow areas just a bit denser than the film edge, or
do they have a heavy density of silver and stain?
---Carl
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